


The Dreamers of the Day

by deathgetsusall, Rrrowr



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Spy, Canon Related, First Meetings, First Time, Government Agencies, Implied Torture, M/M, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Psychological Torture, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 06:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 88,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathgetsusall/pseuds/deathgetsusall, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rrrowr/pseuds/Rrrowr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.</i> -- <b>T. E. Lawrence</b></p><p>Before Cobb, they’d both been the best at the game.</p><p>Before they were legends, they had been young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Index

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal thanks to our two betas, Galfridian & Mrs. VC

The story may be read one of two ways:  


  * **Chronicle:** told chronologically from beginning to end
  

  * **Serial:** told mixing past and present



Whatever your choice, the story is the same; the two choices simply provide you with two approaches to the story. These two approaches also reflect the individual personalities of Arthur and of Eames. The chronological narrative of the Chronicle version, like an account in a history book, suits Arthur’s meticulous nature; the casual back-and-forth account in the Serial version suits Eames’ meandering nature.

The story is navigated via the Index, where you choose the version you would like to experience. Clicking the button for either Chronicle or Serial will take you to part one of that version. Then you simply follow the navigational links at the end of each part. Each version is color-coded -- from the chapter headers to the navigation bar at the bottom of the entry -- to help you be sure you're still in the correct version of the story. You can also use the “serial” and “chronicle” tags to navigate, if you prefer.

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594824) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595808)

(Everything has been posted and _should_ be all formatted correctly, but if you notice any errors, _please let us know_. Thank you!)


	2. Serial 1

Extraction is a generally nasty business — has been since its conception — but Arthur has found that it gets glossed over with charming platitudes about 'next generation security' and a shiny veneer of politeness. Before the Inception Job — before Fischer, before Ariadne, before there was even the idea of defensible minds, before Mal and Cobb had ever heard of PASIV devices — life had been harder. Back then, dream sharing had still been new. Talents had to be discovered and territory, explored. Mistakes were made and risks were taken and it was like skating the cutting edge of a blade. Some people slipped, but for Arthur and Eames, they rode that edge hard and fast. Even when it cut them, they kept coming back for more. There was nothing like it.

Inception has made their group famous — to a point. (Too much attention in this business is never a good thing.) The jobs come in swarms and they can afford to be picky, charge ridiculous amounts for their participation in simple jobs, and take lengthy vacations in exotic locations, but even as he finds the evolving challenges of the mutable art of dream theft to be intriguing, though, Arthur vaguely misses the 'good old days.' 

The longer he's in the business, the more he wishes for people who understand what it was like to be a dreamer back in the old days and had experienced the thrill of pioneering techniques considered staples of the game these days. Then, the Somnacin recipe was so new and imperfect that anyone could startle themselves out of dreams. It's his (misplaced, he thinks grumpily) nostalgia that has restarted his bizarre relationship with Eames. Of the people that Arthur interacts with these days, Eames is the only person who remembers what it was like to fight for every scrap of leverage and treasure every moment of peace.

Winters — as Arthur had known him then — is still a lingering legend in the field, despite disappearing off of the map in July 2010, after a job gone wrong in Bolivia. It's sometimes a shame — as much freedom as working under new names affords — that neither of them can work under their former code names. Maybe then, Arthur could do more than think of Eames as a thief and Eames could finally branch out his expertise on other jobs as he had during Inception. It's the price they've paid, however, and their story — as Winters and as Wright — began a long time before then.

Before Cobb, they’d both been the best at the game.

Before they were legends, they had been young.

**MANDALAY, MYANMAR (AUGUST 2007)**

It starts when Arthur comes to work in the morning to find his laptop misplaced — tucked to the left of his desk instead of the usual right. What's missing is the inch-thick binder containing his research on a UN politician, who has been rather heavy-handed with policies as of late. The binder itself isn't important; the information it contains is on the hard drives of several computers in Arthur's possession. He doesn't think about the binder's absence until he powers on his laptop and starts digging for his files on the politician — because it's gone, all of it. Every folder is empty; every scrap of information relevant to his current job has been deleted.

He's on the phone immediately, calling for the portable hard drive from his office in the States to be sent to him overnight. He doesn't fret. This is only a minor setback — a glitch in the system is probably to blame — but it's one that has him on the phone for a good fifteen minutes. In the meantime, his laptop flips up a screen-saver, and instead of a digital clock, it's a revolving business card.

The program is plain — black background with a white rectangle that slowly passes from back to front, allowing Arthur plenty of time to read the message that's been left for him. _Pleasure doing business with you_ , says one side. The text is too uneven to be anything other than handwriting. With loopy Ys and plump, curvaceous Ss, the words are feminine in an annoyingly perky way. On the back, it's signed, _Winters_ , with a stylized snowflake dotting the I instead of the heart Arthur had half expected.

It's not a calling card that Arthur anticipated seeing. Even if all he's heard is rumors, the name of a excellent Forger is one he recognizes.

That's when he realizes he's been robbed and that whatever team Winters is working with now will be going after the politician Arthur has been assigned to.

Arthur's a fool to assume that "Winters" is a woman, though most Forgers are, especially when he's unable to dig up any information — not even a photograph. Arthur tells himself that Winters is part of a team and that a job, even when it's just a heist, only works as well as the team does as a whole. He assumes that Winters only manages to get past security through the masterful abilities of the rest of the team. That he let his dearth of information on Winters suggest that the Forger would be less of a threat than the rest of the team is an unacceptable oversight.

When Arthur investigates the team, he sees — and summarily dismisses — the man loitering at the edges of the group with a cup of tea cradled in his palm. Everyone else is recognizable from their files, so they’ll be the first to go; he can afford to wait for Winters. Arthur searches out the best vantage for spying on their meeting, but by the time he's situated, the courtyard they had been in is deserted.

Chasing is useless. He knows their target, so he knows where they'll end up eventually. Arthur chooses to take his time and see what the team might have left behind in their rushed departure. It's a bit disappointing to find it empty but for a slim table, upon which sits a white business card propped against a cup of tea.

 _Winters_ , says the card. It's white face shines up at Arthur — pristine and mocking. The snowflake is different, but the handwriting is familiar, if sloppier. He has a matching one as his screen saver still. Wondering if there's a message left with this card too, Arthur picks up the card and turns it over.

It reads: _Nice try, Mr. Wright_. There's even a smiley face chasing after the period.

The taunt makes Arthur scowl — more so because Winters and the rest of Arthur's competitors have slipped through his grasp yet again. Still, it's curious that he hadn't seen Winters' arrival.

Of all the people that had been in this courtyard, the only one not in Arthur's files was the man with the teacup. Broad shouldered, tattooed and with a squared-off sort of shape to him, he looked like the type to have a grounding in architecture. Arthur had dismissed him, but the signs were pointing increasingly to a job with a far more fluid sense of self.

As Arthur stuffs the card into his pocket and starts toward the main road to catch a taxi, the realization that Winters is not the woman he'd assumed the Forger to be strikes him as oddly fitting. It isn't that female Forgers are any less capable, but between the note cards and the bold move of stealing directly from Arthur's desk, Winters has always struck Arthur as someone who wanted for attention in a way that female Forgers tended not to. The sheer volume of rumors around his name is a testament to that. After all, what kind of government agent fostered a reputation besides one that wanted attention? That much, Arthur could understand.

Still, the acknowledgment of this difference is enough to reset Arthur's thinking. His mistake has been to make assumptions about his competitors. He'll soon have to make up for that.

Winters and his team scatter to the wind in the wake of a job well-done. Arthur tracks them down and keeps tabs on their movements as best he can. He reports back to his superiors and gradually, the team members are pulled back and drawn underground by their Dreamshare Program. The Forger and his tag-along, however, are the only ones that manage to escape Arthur's investigation for any length of time.

Arthur follows Winters' movements through his own abilities as well as the obnoxious little note cards that are left behind. Winters is good — very good — at what he does and isn't afraid to have Arthur following. When he's working, he's smooth, slipping in and out of places like a ghost and leaving behind only whispers of his presence. For all the breadth and boisterous attitude that shines through in the messages he leaves in his wake, however, Winters seems to be easily forgettable. When Arthur asks, people comment on his arrogance, his rudeness, but forget the details: his clothing, his face, and most importantly, his real name — if they knew it at all.

It makes Arthur pick apart what little he knows about the Forger. He's heard that Winters is the first man to try altering his appearance and the first to mold the environment into his own tool. That he can take materials from within a dream and turn them into something new is an amazing feat of memory and precision — one that could be easily used to strike into the field of architecture.

Instead, Winters spreads rumors about his own magnificence and waxes poetical about how Forgers are just Architects that don't get caught. Arthur hears stories, of course, of Forgers that try to extend their abilities to the dreams around them only to garner too much attention from projections and get killed for their trouble. Winters' history is no different, and everyone in the field knows what that means.

Even though they might wake up, fine and dandy, getting killed feels real every time, the phantom pains of wounds stick around, and there’s the mission to think of anyway.

Miffed at the reminder, Arthur fiddles with one of the little calling cards Winters has left behind. It's a business card with his code name across the front in curling script — handwritten, beautiful, and aggravating as all hell. The note cards are enough to make Arthur consider retaliation a sensible decision. It would do no good to his reputation for people to think that anyone so arrogant could slip under his radar.

He chases Winters down now, following his footsteps like a hunting dog. It helps that he knows that Winters' ultimate targets are the secrets of a politician in the UN. Arthur hasn’t yet been able to discern for himself a way to extract the right information, but he knows that he can't let Winters get to the Mark. It’s not easy to sniff out the path Winters has taken, and of the seven members of his team, only Winters seems to have known better than to use his own name.

It only takes one slip for Arthur to catch up, however, and in his youth and inexperience, Winters’ lingering associate has managed to make his final mistake.

He finds them in a crowded apartment complex just off the core gathering of towers that make up the city center of Mandalay, Myanmar. It's squat and unappealing, in shades of off-white and blue, and the inside reeks of mold and iron. There’s a man fixing his dirt bike in the middle of the hallway, arguing with his wife, who is leaning out of the doorway. They each give Arthur a suspicious look when he enters their floor from the stairwell and they glance toward one of the apartment doors without saying a word. The door has a hole in the front of it like someone’s tried to kick it in and the paint on the doorknob is flaking and rubbed away.

There's no telling how Winters managed to get the politician here, but if Extractors are willing to work here, then at least that means the people nearby seem to know when to look the other way. Arthur can hear the shouts and noise from the neighbors even after he closes the door, but the slight swell in noise does alert Winters’ partner to Arthur’s entrance. Moving fast, Arthur gets an arm around the man’s throat and twists him toward the ground to pin him. It takes a long moment before he slumps in Arthur’s arms, unconscious, but by then, Arthur’s not even looking at him anymore.

The PASIV device is sitting between two pairs of feet; it’s counting down from ten minutes already. Too late to beat Winters to the Mark, Arthur realizes; he could wait it out, but he’d rather not. He could prematurely end the dream, but that would just alert the target. He looks at the countdown (nine minutes, 47 seconds) and at the narrow tubes tightly wound around the Somnacin cartridge. Considering them, Arthur thinks on how he's always been taught that it’s impossible to follow someone into a dream once the administration of Somnacin has begun, but he’s never seen anyone try. Arthur grabs for the third IV and settles himself on the floor before falling down into what will surely be a very interesting dream.

  


According to his watch — a loose slip of chained timepiece around his wrist — Eames has been under for five minutes, fifteen seconds. He's been lucky so far. Even without another team mate to distract the projections, none of them had so much as glanced at him when he'd shed his body for a forge that's smaller, younger and more vulnerable. It's a point of pride that he can waltz through the dream in strappy heels, intentionally stumbling into the Mark's arms, without the threat of accidentally waking himself. From there, it's easy to insert himself into his target's personal space and to woo him as only a Forger can.

He’s got nothing but time down here — a commodity Eames is only beginning to appreciate in these last few weeks of hard running — and the Mark is all but salivating to tell him all his secrets. Next door, there's a vault with a big crank on the front and hundreds of little lock boxes with golden doors. Eames can see it from where he sits, leaning toward the Mark in his delicate little disguise of the evening. The Mark — politician, relentless businessman, suspected pedophile — has had his back to it this entire time; he can’t bear to look at it, Eames can tell, but he can’t stand not having it close either.

“Say,” he sighs into the Mark's ear, laughing lightly and girlishly. The Mark’s hands slide up Eames' ribs and under his breasts. “Let’s play a game. Tell me the first three numbers that come to your mind.”

The Mark chuckles low and lets his hands go low on Eames' body to give his ass cheeks a squeeze. “What kind of game is this, little girl?”

Eames giggles, chewing on his lower lip. “A fun game,” he promises. “You’ll like it.” He climbs into the Mark’s lap and wraps his arms around the man’s neck, shoulders hitching up shyly while he ducks his head. “You’ll like it a lot.”

“Alright then,” the Mark agrees happily, smacking Eames’s bottom before sliding his hand up his sundress. “Three. Ten. Forty-two.”

Grinning, Eames hides his face in the Mark’s neck and begins to make his explanation (three orgasms, ten kisses, forty-two minutes) when he sees a slick young man ghost up to the vault door, tap the three numbers into the keypad, and spin the crank.

“What the fuck,” Eames gapes, eyes going wide because he’d been quite certain that no one had come into the dream with him besides the Mark and that no projection was going to act with that level of decisiveness unless they were after Eames' blood. “No way.” The young man looks toward him at the sound of his voice and ducks into the vault with a smirk. “No _fucking_ way!”

The projections focus in on Eames as he throws himself from the Mark’s lap and darts toward the still open vault door. He’s running into the young man — Mr. Wright, he remembers when he at last recognizes the impassively haughty expression of the pest of an American airman who’s been on his trail since Beijing and who his partner had promised had been lost — elbow first, striking with all his strength and reaching for the photographs that had been taken from an open lock box. Wright grunts, but manages to sidestep the worst of it, twirling Eames around him and sending him flying past.

“What are you doing here?” Eames snaps as he molds one of his slippers into a pistol and points it at Wright.

“My job,” Wright replies, grinning as he raises his hands. He doesn’t look any older than twenty in the face, but his suits and slicked hair beg to be seen as someone older, successful, and worth respecting. “Surprised?” Eames scowls and Wright’s smiles broadens. “Me, too, but I can’t complain with the results.” His eyes flick over Eames’ form, brows raised at his sunflower blonde hair, his slender young girl body, and the kiss bruises on his mouth. “Nicely made.”

“Yeah?” Eames says, voice dripping with false pleasure. “I’m glad you like her so much. I’ll even let you give her a go after you hand over the papers, alright?”

Wright glances over his shoulder at the open vault door, at the Mark and his projections that are gathering and looking eerily focused and furious. “Thanks for the offer,” he says. “I think I’ll just look at them and go.”

Eames angles the nose of the gun to Wright’s leg, rather than his head. “I will shoot you and let you bleed out slow and painful. I said, hand them over.”

“And I said—”

Eames' first shot sounds like an explosion — louder than normal in the confined space of the vault — and Wright flinches. Beside him, a projection pitches forward, carried by the momentum of his lunge toward Eames. Eames snatches one photo from the American’s hands (the Mark and his daughter — good, but not enough — _what is his secret?_ ) and throws off the grip of another projection.

Wright retreats to the side and backwards — through the swarming projections, dropping papers and pictures as he finishes with them. Eames rips free of a woman with sharp fingernails and shoots the three men behind her. He starts toward Wright, but is pinned to the wall by attackers. His gun goes flying out of his hand and _oh_ — he bellows in furious frustration at having the information extracted right out from under him, at having done all the work only to have some American sweep in with a smile and claim all the goods... Then there’s the glint of a knife and the slide of it into his gut is exactly what Eames imagines it to be in reality — hot and painful and sharp all the way through his body. The noise he makes is all pain — the quick, whining inhale and the slow exhale that does nothing to alleviate.

His head jerks, looking through long blonde hair toward Wright, who is standing from where he knelt to pick up Eames’s gun. “I hate you,” Eames hisses — soft but no less vehement. The projection jerks the knife free and it punches right back in. Eames drops his head and stifles a whimper. Around them, the vault trembles in time with Eames’s stuttering heartbeat. “God, I hate you so much right now, you arsehole.”

The ceiling is the first to crumble; only Eames and Wright notice. Out of the corner of his eye, Eames can see the other man raise the gun and aim. His eyes close when the knife is pulled from him and the next moment is Eames opening his eyes to the sunken ceiling of an apartment in Myanmar. He shudders slow to alertness, square palms stroking over the planes of his very uninjured stomach just to make sure that the phantom pains really are phantom.

When he sits up, Mr. Wright is sitting across from him with a gun resting on one knee and Eames’s partner sprawled out on the concrete floor at his feet. He sighs, looking at the poor, young, eager-but-stupid bastard, and raises a brow at Wright, who shrugs. (The kid will survive then.)

They sit there for a moment observing each other. Wright’s clean — not uniformed and ironed clean; not even suit-clean in the khaki-polo combination that screams tourist, but with an air of freshness — and he looks distinctly unruffled. It irks Eames a little that Wright’s giving off the impression that trumping him is something he’s done easily, when Eames knows that’s not the case. (It’s not ego. He knows his abilities, and the risk Mr. Wright has taken is tremendous. It would be stupid to lie to himself in reality.) Still, it makes Eames scrub at the shadow of his beard; Wright’s hand doesn’t quite twitch around the gun.

“If you’re waiting for a ‘thank you,’ you’ll be here for a long time,” Eames grumbles.

Wright’s mouth does broaden at that, enough to reveal a pair of dimples. “Just want to make sure you won’t be following," he says and really, Eames thinks, he shouldn't be considering the man in possession of his gun to be any level of adorable.

The American is practically vibrating in the chair. As much as he holds himself still, Eames can tell it requires some energy. The shake is in his knees and along the line of his jaw and over his arms. He can’t really blame him for the reaction: no one has ever tried following Eames into a dream; Eames hadn’t even known it was possible. Watching him be so _thrilled_ at his accomplishment — despite his cavalier demeanor — meant that Eames could barely be mad at him for having done it at all. There was something absolutely fascinating about finding someone in the world that would even dare.

Still, Eames thinks that — if it weren’t for the gun; his gun, his beautiful, monster of a Glock 17 — he would be up, knocking Wright unconscious and hooking him up to the PASIV so that he could extract the information all over again. It would be difficult, but Eames knows the faces of a few commanders across the ocean... But there is the gun, after all.

“You have something I want,” Eames tells him plainly. “My not following would be an awful imposition.”

Wright turns the gun over, rubs his thumb up the side of it like a caress. (Eames does not scowl.) “I’ve already shot you once today, Winters,” he says and leaves the rest of it hanging ominously in the air between them. His eyes are bright though, impish in the face of their current situation.

Eames licks across the front of his teeth and does not look away, even when Wright stands and the Mark starts to stir into wakefulness. He keeps looking, tracking details with his mind as the other man turns his back on him.

“I’ll be keeping my eye on you!” Eames calls after him just as Wright opens the door because apparently he can't help himself to stay away from a challenge.

The grin Mr. Wright flashes back at him is all teeth — feral and pleased. “Maybe you should use both eyes.”

**MAGADAN, RUSSIA (JANUARY 2010)**

Eames has been uneasy since the start of this mission.

The orders had arrived in his email without so much of a whisper of a warning. There had been no previous interest in the target they were having him investigate and the information turned up in the background investigation, while detailed and thorough, had been... typical. (Unremarkable, really, is the word to describe it.)

The team to which he’s been assigned is not his usual team, but at least they’re familiar faces that he remembers from Worth’s team — one architect and two forgers, all of whom have sufficient enough training to at least keep up. Russia, too, is an unsettling choice in final destination, but at least Russia has been chosen because that’s where the target’s going, even if that does mean heading to Magadan, quite possibly the source of all winter in the world. But the plan has been made, the dreams have been built, and Eames has uneasily gone along with it.

No forging here. No need for it. He slips into the dream, natural as anything, and wakes up on the other side to a city full of twists and turns. Too many unmarked streets and not enough crosswalks and he’s stuck waiting for the traffic to die down so that he can just cross the goddamn street and get to the cafe, hole up with a chair and magazine and wait for the Mark to show.

Ugh, he hates cities. They’re always this faintly oily grime on all the surfaces, and the air is thick with exhaust and smoke. People stream down the sidewalks on their cell phones and their PDAs but never make eye contact, even when someone is standing so helplessly lost as he is. Give him a cottage; give him a town house; give him a bungalow for fuck’s sake (or a hut, even; he’ll take a hut). All Eames wants out of a home is excellent company and a good puzzle. Cities are mazes and therefore wonderful for extraction and the evasion of projections, but Eames has never been able to feel altogether comfortable in them.

Eames squints up at the sun. It’s not quite London — not quite New York — but some mixture in between. The buildings are tall and stretch forever into the sky like New York, but the feel is all London: broad side walks, random buildings from the olden days buried between walls of glass. The taxis are white. The traffic signal is just a collection of lights blinking red and green and yellow. He stands on the corner of Hope and Lost and wonders if his team is ever going to make an appearance.

It’s right about then that the car hits him.

He isn’t hit too badly. It takes more than this to wake him up these days, but it still hurts like hell. He rolls up the windscreen, off the end of the boot and hits the ground. He’s too winded to do anything more than lie there, gasping and hurting. Maybe it’s because he just got hit by a fucking car that he just turns a wry smile when it’s Arthur and two others that get out of the car and converge on him.

He tells himself that it isn’t disappointment that settles into him when he recognizes Arthur’s face. It’s not like they’re friends exactly, despite their history. Point of fact, Eames could quite easily define their relationship as a loose rivalry. They’re on opposite sides, of course — an unfortunate side effect of birthplace and employment — and they’ve each taken it upon themselves to put in place challenges that the other might not otherwise encounter. It’s been a game; it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been like this.

“Another sneak attack, Mr. Wright? I would have expected something beyond that old trick,” he comments dryly as they grab him under the arms to drag him into the nearest building.

Struggle is expected, so he goes limp in their hold, dragging his heels every step of the way. He expects to be tortured (dreams are good for that — pain being in the mind and all, with nothing but the psychological damage as proof that anything happened at all) but that’s before they dump him into one of six hospital beds in a windowless room.

“Dream within a dream, hm? That’s new,” he comments with just a touch of appreciation when he sees Arthur pull a PASIV case from under the bed. Eames’ body aches, but he still fights when one of the agents grabs his wrist. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you,” Eames grinds out as a square-jawed American cuffs him to the hospital bed. “At least your imagination isn’t failing you, eh, Arthur?”

Despite the slipping out of code names, Arthur is completely impassive, cool and efficient. It is both like and unlike the Arthur that Eames is familiar with. Even when they had been in dreams together before, the repartee had always been present, always sharp and fast and just short of ruthless. Arthur has never been the type of man that succumbed to a sense of urgency, but now his movements as he sets up the PASIV device are fast. Still, those are definitely his fingers, definitely the pattern with which he uncoils the tubing and measures out the Somnacin.

He wonders...

“Has something happened?” he asks, testing the cuffs around his wrists. Arthur barely spares Eames a glance and Eames frowns at Arthur’s lack of response. Rather unintentionally, panic ratchets up in his chest. “What? Cat got your tongue or are you still mad about that thing with M?”

Eames jerks away from Arthur’s hand when he reaches for it, but is stopped short by the cuff. “Why are you doing this? Where is my team? What are you looking for?”

“It’s just business, Mr. Winters,” Arthur says — drawling as if he’s bored. “Nothing personal.” But when he slides the cannula into Eames’ wrist, it still feels like a stab to the gut.

Somnacin is just as effective in dreams as it is up above, Eames finds, and as he feels the sluggishness start to pull him down, he circles around Arthur like a drain, wondering at the inconsistencies and pulling at the uneven texture of Arthur’s personality while he sits, ramrod straight, in his chair.

“Winters.” The door closing behind him makes Eames tense, but the man that swoops around him to the desk is Commander Bartlett. (Good man, Commander Bartlett; always has been, always had his eye on Eames’ progress, always sent the interesting jobs to Eames’ desk just to see what he would do with them. Eames likes him well enough, but doesn’t actually know him, which was a feat in and of itself, considering.) “You’ve been doing good work, Winters. I’m proud to call you one of my agents.”

The hat under his left hand is folded flat, embroidered along the side with a rank insignia. His right hand is flat on his knee, rubbing at the thick material of a uniform that felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“The thing is,” Bartlett continues, folding his hands in front of him. He seems to be weighing his words carefully. “The thing is that the Americans are getting a little restless. Because of that, we’d like you to do this one last mission for us.”

“We?” Eames echoes. Then: “Sir — a last mission?”

Bartlett nods gravely. “I know this will be a lot to ask of you, Winters. You know how much we value your expertise and your pioneering of the PASIV technology. It’s the very depth of that knowledge that makes you imperative for this mission.”

Eames straightens that much more at the compliment. “Yes, sir. What’s the mission?”

The Commander pulls a photograph from the file near his left elbow. It’s big and glossy and perfect. He lays it flat on his desk (solid oak, very sturdy; Eames had kicked it once in a fit of anger and nearly broke his toe for his trouble; Bartlett had looked sympathetic as he’d sent him to the infirmary, and then written him up for disorderly conduct). “There’s a particular American agent that’s becoming somewhat of a problem for us,” says Bartlett and he spins the photograph toward Eames. “I think you’ve had run-ins with him before.”

The image is right from a memory. The slicked back hair, the daring expression around the eyes. The slightest of quirks around the mouth — like he’s smirking at something off camera. Arthur is as clean cut as Eames always imagines he is.

“Ah,” Eames starts — then swallows. With this reveal, Eames is now quite certain of what Bartlett will be telling him to do. “Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, sir. I’ve seen him before.”

Bartlett’s smile is horrifyingly pleasant as he rounds the desk to squeeze Eames' shoulder. “Good, good.” Then, he seems to find something worrying in Eames’ face. “There’s nothing to worry about, son,” he assures Eames. He’s never ever called Eames ‘son’. “It’s just business. Nothing personal about it.” He grabs the rest of the file, tucks the photograph into the folder, and hands it over to Eames. “The details are all inside. Take all the time you need.” He nods to a door to the right. “He’s in the next room.”

“Wha—” Eames stands as Bartlett stands. “Sir, you want me to begin now?”

Bartlett gestures toward the door with an open palm. “If you could.”

“Right,” Eames mutters, looking down at the awful red color of the folder in his hands. He tucks it in at his side and stands at attention. “Will that be all, sir?”

Bartlett nods. “That will be all.”

His salute is snappy. “Good evening, sir.” It doesn’t stop the twitch under his eyes from happening, though. He turns toward the door and does his best not to seem like he’s hesitating to go through it.

Arthur is tied, slumped, in a wooden chair with his back toward Eames. There’s a bag over his head, but Eames would recognize the hard line of those shoulders anywhere. When Eames closes the door behind him, Arthur twists in his bonds, tilting his ear toward the sound. His fingers flex against the rope. It’s more liveliness than Eames thought he might see; he’s unreasonably grateful to notice this. There’s a second chair across from Arthur into which Eames drops the folder. He hasn’t bothered looking past the mission dossier on the first page (can’t think past the details of what's being required of him — every action planned out in exacting, terrifying clarity.) Of the rest of the papers, there’s nothing in there that will help him — nothing in there that he doesn’t already know, probably, and what are details like real names and birthdays when they’ve held guns to each other’s heads?

There’s a PASIV device on a table against the wall in a case that’s shiny and new. Its presence clashes with all the dirty walls, the wooden furniture, the rusted tin box of tools, and the grainy sand that’s scuffing the shine of his shoes. It’s an unwelcome addition to an already unwelcoming room.

Abruptly, Arthur laughs. “Is this the silent treatment?” he asks. “Are you hoping that I’ll tell you all my secrets like this? You’re going to have to dig a little deeper than that.”

Eames runs his hands around the edge of the case. It pops open with two little clicks. Inside, the PASIV is already on and ready for action. The timer is set for half an hour. Eames can do a lot of damage in that amount of time.

“I’m not deaf,” Arthur grates out. “I know you’re here. You can tell your leader &mdash your commander or boss or whatever — that I’m not going to talk. I am a member of the United States Air Force and—”

“Arthur.”

_I don’t want to do this._

Arthur has gone still behind him. “Eames?”

When he turns around, Arthur is turned toward him at a ridiculous angle to listen to his movements through the bag that's over his head. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Arthur pulls himself upright again. It's as if all the fight, all his snappy aggravation, has left him. “Am I being hopeful when I ask if you’ve been captured too?”

Eames walks slowly forward to stand in front of Arthur, noting that he’s tense but doesn’t appear to be panicking or at wit’s end. Steeling himself, he fists his hand in burlap and pulls off the bag. Arthur blinks — not the frantic blink of adjusting to the light, but somehow languid and bored — and his head tilts fractionally forward so that his mussed hair falls into his eyes. This would deceive anyone who was not Eames perhaps, but there is no vulnerability in the action — only sly calculation.

Eames knows how Arthur hates for his hair to be imperfect, and can’t bear to have it in his eyes. He smooths it back into some semblance of order with an unsteady hand. Arthur is quick to mask the complicated look in his eyes, but Eames sees it and snatches his hand back as if burned. He doesn’t want to make this harder than it already has to be for both of them.

_I really, really don’t want to do this._

He turns to the toolkit behind him so he can’t look at Arthur’s face. His hands are still shaky as he moves them over the soft padding around the instruments. His voice, when he finds it, is thankfully steady, but inside his heart is stuttering out — panicking, wishing like mad to be anywhere but here, to feel anything but the bore of Arthur’s gaze between his shoulder blades.

Regarding hope and whether Arthur has too much of it?

“Yes.”

  


Arthur hates Russia. As in — he hates being forced to go to Russia to pick up four of America's wayward charges. Tracking them down has been no problem, of course; they haven't seemed to expect to be followed, but there's a long delay between the realization of their disappearance and the actual hunt. Still, it's notable that their movements are a little suspicious — dropping through London for a few days and from there straight to Russia with another name in tow through all the connecting flights.

The building they've holed up in is actually reasonably classy. It might be someone's home and getting in is just a matter of letting his subordinates break and enter in the style for which they're equipped. The sounds of a scuffle are quickly silenced ahead of him. Arthur doesn't worry; his team is well-trained. He takes his time observing his surroundings while the rest of them secure the premises. Inside the building, it's all faded worn rugs over tile flooring; artwork is cracked and dusty to match the dreary, yellowed curtains around the windows. Arthur thinks the layout would normally be tasteful if it hadn't been so clear that the estate hadn't seen the proper care it deserved in years.

"Sir," calls one of the lieutenants. She tilts her head toward one of the doors behind her. "In the dining room."

There are four of them hooked up to a single device with a fifth lying incapacitated on the ground by the door. Arthur makes sure that the head wound he sees isn't any worse than it looks — he's assured it isn't — before moving deeper into the dining room. The PASIV sits on a circular table and the dreamers each have their arms stretched toward it, palm open and fingers limp around the IV lines. Arthur circles around the table as he tucks his gun into its holster. Of the four, all of them are familiar faces and exceptional dreamers, but only one of them stands out with titles like Best and First and Only.

“What are you doing here,” Arthur murmurs as he stops behind Eames’ chair and bends to rub his thumb beside the cannula in the Englishman's wrist. “What are you doing in Russia with four AWOL airmen?”

Eames is supposed to be back in England, though it's obvious to Arthur now exactly who had been picked up in London, and frankly, the others should still be stateside and nowhere near Russia. The others — three men and one woman; a Point Man, an Architect and two Forgers, respectively — are not unfamiliar with the peculiarities of shared dreaming, and working with an agent from another country, up until eight months ago, would have been out of the question. That Eames is hooked up with them at all, when Arthur knows that they're far below the Englishman's normal talent range, is beyond his comprehension.

He shucks off his coat and hangs it on the back of one of the chairs. “A situation most curious.”

It would be easy to just unhook them all and wake them up, but a larger part of him wants to know what's happening. There's no target here; no one who wouldn't be hell to extract. Waking them up now wouldn't answer any questions they might face when Arthur drags them back home.

Arthur takes a few zip ties from the duffel of a younger agent and ties the Architect to his chair. “Keep an eye on him,” Arthur orders as he yanks the cannula from the dreamer’s wrist and claims an empty chair. He nods to one of the lieutenants for them to grab an IV from the PASIV. "Carter, grab a line. No one leaves until we're back. Understood?”

He waits until he hears a chorus of ‘yes sir’s' before hooking himself up.

Sliding into a dream that’s already in progress is much like opening a book in the middle and starting a story there. It’s like, sure, no one ever really knows the beginning of dreams, but he always seems to hit the ground running, already on the look out. The city is crowded, but no one makes eye contact until he stumbles across one of the agents, who is scanning the crowds from the doorway of a squat building. The action itself is an obvious give away; projections never start looking around them until there’s a problem. Gunning down the agent is out of the question, as impossible as it is to maintain the dream with the dreamer gone, and setting him on the run, free to wreak havoc on the dream with his talent, would just be reckless. Carter, at his direction, takes the agent down swiftly with a shot to the shoulder. He shouts as he twists backwards, and the projections blandly glance down at him as they pass. Arthur sweeps in while Carter drags the agent deeper into the building and closes the door.

It's nondescript inside. Plain walls, plain tables — flat, unappealing color. Altogether lacking in the detail that had been present outside. It's unneeded, he supposes, when the dreamer is fast asleep. He can’t help but react a little when he sees a PASIV device, though — a second one with Eames and the female Forger hooked up and another IV leading to a third, empty hospital bed.

"Keep an eye on things here, Carter," he orders as he grabs up the third cannula that's leaking Somnacin all over the sheets. "Don't let him wake up."

Carter's assuring response is lost in the hazy muddle of falling into a military base — or an approximation of one, though not one that’s familiar to him. All the projections are in uniform and they stream past Arthur without looking at him. As he ventures through it, he passes a door that’s wide open. He happens to glance inside, and the man at the desk looks up at him.

Recognizing the man's face, Arthur stops immediately: “The dreamer, I presume,” and ducks out of the way when the Commander starts firing his weapon.

There's a moment of silence after he's out of sight. Arthur has to strain to hear the rustle of movement as Commander Bartlett tries to find a position from which he can find Arthur. In the meantime, Arthur slides down the wall, to a level that is low and unpredictable. He has no doubts that the Bartlett inside the room is the female Forger from the first dream level, which means that he must be at least somewhat close to Eames.

Drawing his weapon, Arthur twists toward the doorway and falls to his side, firing as he hits the ground. The Glock 17 has a hell of a recoil, even in dreams, jerking against Arthur's grip as he squeezes off a couple lucky shots. Bartlett lets loose a bark of pain as the bullet rips through his thigh and collapses to the floor of his office, finally flickering until the older, wizened features of the Commander melt away into the the elfin countenance of the Forger hooked up with Eames up above. 

“Where’s Eames?” Arthur demands, coming up and stepping down on her bleeding thigh. She bites back a shout as she grabs at his ankle. He aims down at the knee of her other leg with his pistol. “Where do you have him?” She looks confused behind the pain. “Winters!” Arthur snaps and though she doesn’t say anything, her eyes have already given her away.

Arthur whirls in the direction that the Forger’s eyes had darted and leaves her whimpering behind him to reach for the doorknob. He pauses when he hears a scream from within — something high and sobbing — and behind him, the Forger laughs.

The room behind the door is dingy, dirty and altogether unpleasant to look at. A single light hangs from the ceiling, burning dull and yellow between two men — Eames and another Arthur. The light makes Eames look sickly — jaundiced, with blood up one arm and over his chest. Eames’ hands are caked with red, and he’s leaning over the projection of Arthur, hands cupping its cheeks.

He’s saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, god, Arthur, I’m so sorry. Jesus, why did you have to be so goddamn talented—” through wretched tears, voice cracking around the words.

He hasn’t once looked up to see who’s opened the door.

“Eames,” Arthur calls and above his distraught expression, Eames’ brows crease. “I’ve seen enough.”

More than the way the projection of Arthur is lying limp and unresponsive in a chair, the way Eames looks up at him with a mixture of horror followed by sheer, unfettered relief is enough to make him lift his gun (Eames’ gun; the Glock 17 he’d taken in the dream in Myanmar and could never get rid of) and pull the trigger.

He wakes to Eames yanking at the IV tubing to his arm and shouts wordlessly when Arthur reaches for it himself, to do it painlessly. He ends up falling away from Arthur, eyes wide as he tips off the opposite side of the hospital bed and vanishes. By the time Arthur opens his eyes to reality, Eames is already shoving his way through Arthur’s team and disappearing through the door. He’d like to chase Eames down himself, but the way he’d slipped and scrambled away, like he’d been pushing himself with his feet without wanting to use his hands, is telling when paired with what Arthur already knows.

Like the pain of a knife or a bullet in dreams, there are some sensations that take longer to dissipate. Blood — in all its elegant construction — is slimy and warm and altogether unpleasant on the skin. Arthur rubs his fingers together, smearing the psychological feeling away with chilled fingertips. He’d only got a small amount on him, from where he’d grabbed Eames’ arm as he fell — two levels down and coated in the stuff. He can only imagine that the haunted look in Eames’ eyes is because he can’t unsee himself soaked in another person’s life.

He presses a button in his ear piece to speak to the men outside that are probably already chasing Eames down. “Let him go,” Arthur orders.

  


To Eames, Russia is still unfamiliar. The language looks right for Russian, but languages always seem that way in dreams, even when they’re truly illegible. The streets are confusing — especially labyrinthine with sheets of icy rain smothering Eames' vision — and the people (strangers) who he walks past on the street — pacing and jerking unpredictably down alleys and into bars — turn to stare at him.

He falls into a dark, narrow club — doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know a single person in this snowy hellhole — and scrambles through the cloying heat of too many bodies and too much alcohol. He stumbles down the stairs in the back of the club and ends up in a room with billiards and fold out tables, where old men cluster around and play poker. (He doesn’t know where these people hide all these places; maybe if he’d gone upstairs he’d have found a garden or a brothel or who the fuck knows — it might be a dream; the Architect could have built anything.)

There’s a payphone at the bottom of the stairs — broken or hacked; there’s conveniently already a dial tone when he puts the phone to his ear. He calls his mother. She’s as terse as he could have wanted when she first answers the phone: “Whoever this is had better have a damned good reason for having this number.”

“Mum.”

She’s startled. He can tell by the way he doesn’t hear the inhale, but instead hears her slow, controlled exhale. She says: “Daniel.” (He maybe chokes a little. He hasn’t been called that in years, it seems.) “Daniel, what’s wrong?”

“You were right,” he tells her. His breath is hot around the words. They’re difficult, but he needs them out — out of him, right now, or he’ll bottle them up forever and no one would ever know. “This dream sharing thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

She’s quiet. It is not a judgemental silence; he knows that sound all too well because they scream louder than anything else in his sordid and variable history. “What do you need?”

He presses his fingers against his eyes, squeezes his nose, and is most definitely not crying. “A lift,” he answers, “if you wouldn’t mind. I’m in Magadan.”

He hears her tut at him — surprise that he even thought he would need to ask her — and it’s the best. “I know.” There’s nothing for a few minutes. He waits there, leaning against the payphone and containing the tremble of his body against the watchful eyes of maybe-projections and listens to the indistinct sound of her voice handing out directions, sharp and uncompromising. “Daniel. It will be a few hours. Can you manage?”

He nods furiously. (A few hours is fifteen minutes in the real world. Of course he can manage, but he’s grateful to think that she would stay on the line with him if he needed it.) “Yeah. I can manage.”

Another noise — hopeful and doubtful all in one go. “Keep a look out for James.”

“Yeah, okay.” (Thank you.)

“And Daniel?” she calls before he can drop the phone from his shoulder. “Stay safe. I hear it gets quite cold where you are.”

Eames is definitely (not) crying. “Will do, mum.”

  


[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594853)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594992)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595185)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595230)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594853)

  



	3. Serial 2

**OHIO, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 2007)**

Come a few weeks later, the excitement of having done something first has worn thin for Arthur. The admiration of others is nothing, and he ends up having to prove, over and over, that the things he puts in his reports aren’t lies, that anyone can jump into the middle of dreams, and that it wasn’t just a fluke. The frustration drags him down from his high, stifles it until the blaze is nothing but a burning ember in the shadows. It’s aggravating beyond belief that others can’t understand that, just because they have limits, someone else might not be so hindered by that lack of ingenuity. The only thing that tides him over is his memory of Winters’ face when Arthur had departed — a little fierce, but exhilarated at having found a competitor. That, at least, had been an honest reaction to Arthur's skill as a dreamer.

In the time he’s had to spare (which isn’t much, frankly, but Arthur has always been good at time management and even better at research), he’s dug up little more on Winters. There’s no real name attached to any of Winters’ paperwork; the code name is the only thing that’s stamped at the top of all the official paperwork Arthur can find. There’s no picture, no fingerprints, no birth records, nothing at all that might serve as a connection between the man Arthur had met in the thick humidity of Myanmar and his beginnings. It's as if Winters came off the streets and joined the European Dreamshare Program as a fully formed human being, but Arthur knows there has to be a lead somewhere, so he expands his horizons.

Gentle inquiries into the field about Winters gathers him only rumors about his brilliance. A great deal of it is things Arthur has already heard: Winters is cocky; Winters is the best; Winters is as professional as they come. A scattering of opinions that add up to nothing until he ends up on the phone with an Englishman named Worth, who laughs heartily when he hears Winters’ name.

“Oh, he’s a great Forger alright,” says Worth with the ease of a man that likes being heard. “Never seen a man shift so fast in my life. Last I saw, he was on his way to Cambodia on orders from the Lady Upstairs, but rumor has it, he’s actually in America doing a spot of reconnaissance for some future, international project.”

Arthur asks a few questions here and there, but mostly lets Worth talk. He asks if Winters goes by any other name and gets: “There’s Winnie, of course,” but Worth fumbles immediately. “Actually, I can’t say he’s gone by any other name than that.”

“What about a real name?” Arthur urges.

Worth hums. “No,” he draws out. “If he did, it was before my time.”

When Arthur hangs up the phone an hour later, he’s got a handful of notes on where Winters has been been before and when. He’s got a phone number, an email address, and a post office box in Hampshire. The email he sends gets returned as undeliverable and the post box is registered under an “A. C. Doyle” with no physical address attached. Arthur leaves the phone number uncalled, but he tacks it to the cloth wall of his cubicle above his computer and tries not to look at it. He’ll find Winters another way, he tells himself; mostly because he wonders, if he does call, what would he even say?

Two months pass and Myanmar is still a bright spot in Arthur’s past. He continues to receive orders with **MR. WRIGHT** coded at the top and the folder with information on Winters sits in his briefcase, not getting any thicker for all that Arthur keeps looking. In fact, the deeper he digs, the more Arthur seems to hit road blocks; he’s denied access to files left, right and center. Frustration, when he allows himself to notice it, festers like a burn inside his chest.

“Mr. Wright?”

Arthur looks up to a bouquet of yellow, red and white blossoms and a frazzled-looking man in a jumper uniform. “...Yes?” he ventures.

“For you,” declares the deliverer with a flourish, depositing the flowers — glass vase, embossed note card and all — right on Arthur’s desk before leaving in what could only be described as a weary flounce.

The flowers are pretty, or at least Arthur can tell that they’d intended to be pretty but had become rather wilted in the course of their transit. There are a few broken stems here and there, and the petals are bruised from where security had moved them while searching for anthrax or guns or poison darts or _whatever_ , which Arthur could totally stand beside in the name of safety if maybe they had thought to wonder if Arthur was allergic. He wasn’t, but the point still stood that they should have called his desk when the delivery had come instead of letting the man through with his flowers and his note and his flourish and make Arthur deal with the sudden and intense interest of everyone in his general vicinity.

“What are _those_?” hisses the man across the isle from him. He’s leaning out of his cubicle in an effort to get a better view of the flowers. “Are they from a girlfriend?”

“Please,” cuts in another voice — female this time. “Mr. Wright doesn’t have time for a girlfriend.”

Arthur would be irritated, but she is right. “I don’t know who the flowers are from,” he admits and plucks the note card from its plastic fork. There’s still dust on the card from where security had further deigned to search for fingerprints. He can feel everyone leaning over to watch him read.

 _Found you_ , the card says. It’s signed with a curling, loopy, highly feminine swirl: _Winnie~._

“ _Christ_ ,” Arthur curses, alarm slicing through him, and proceeds to ensure that the flowers are disposed of properly.

He tucks the note card in his pocket and scoops up the vase with one hand. When one of the women near his cubicle watches him head toward the kitchenette area at the end of the room, he hears her flutter behind him and coo with hearts in her eyes: Oh my, is Mr. Wright going to water them? It’s with a dark sense of satisfaction that he listens for her strangled surprised as he opens the chute for the incinerator next to the sink and drops the flowers — vase, plastic fork and all — inside.

He keeps the note though.

“So...” drawls the man stationed in the cubicle across from Arthur’s. “Not a girlfriend.”

Despite his frequent calls to security for them to put the gifts to a halt, Arthur starts receiving them every week without fail. They’re always a bit battered by the time they reach him and are always accompanied by a note. _Better luck next time_ , says one, after Arthur’s spent a week going through legitimate channels to get to Winters’ background information, trying to tie events to the dates that Worth had given him. It comes with box of chocolates — melted and somewhat crushed, apologetically spilling their coconut contents into their individual cups — and Arthur picks at them for a little while with his fingers before deciding that these too will suffer incineration. (The forlorn expression of the lady that sits nearest him is comical; she huffs as he passes, clearly disappointed that yet another gift is being dismissed.)

He gets a string of compact discs full of music, of all different types — classical full of piano and guitar, raunchy jazz and grating screamo, plucky folk and boisterous Broadway tunes, top forties and classic rock, alternative pop and country swing — and the notes that come with it are jaunty, teasingly asking how his search is going. There’s Le Petit Prince with a French quote about roses in Winnie’s flirtatious hand, and a smooth bottle of Puerto Rican rum that tastes like oak and tropical fruit with a request for Arthur to simply _Enjoy~_. A whole carton of clove cigarettes arrives with a companion that reads, _Nasty habit, but these smell wonderful_. A small sack of whole bean coffee that smells rich and dark and powerful arrives with a stone-carved mug, and he gets tickets to a small theatre near his office that he doesn’t have the time to use — not that he would have. He keeps the coffee and the cigarettes, but the theatre tickets get forked off to one of his coworkers, who grudgingly accepts them after giving him a searching look when he explains that he doesn’t go to the theatre and someone might as well use them.

It’s galling to know that as secret as he is — as infolded as his history is behind **TOP SECRET** stamps and security clearance — he is still being tailed. Winters must be fast on his feet and in his mind to follow Arthur with such steady precision and discover each of his moves as soon as he’s made them. It would be exciting to have such a capable opponent in the field if only Arthur didn’t feel so hunted, if he didn’t suspect that every rooftop, every door, every window hid a Forger, whose intentions, baffling at first, become clear once Arthur thinks about it.

_I want to know you._

The sentiment is written in every note card Arthur has sitting at home. Not literally, of course, but in the way Winters prods at him, discovering what effects he can have on an American agent. It’s in the way the gifts start out general but become more focused as time goes on. It’s in how they stop coming to the office, worse for the wear, and start showing up in pristine condition to the hotel at which Arthur is staying, at his apartment in L.A or, more uneasily, his home in Columbus. It’s in the handwriting, too — in Winnie’s open and beautiful script, with flirtatious intent within every loop, increasingly fluctuating into Winter’s natural penmanship: still open and beautiful but with sharper lines and tighter, smaller letters that lick at the margins.

When Arthur reaches the end of his rope when it comes to connections, he stops looking for Winters altogether. The gifts cease. The notes fail to turn up. For a whole month, Arthur looks up whenever someone passes, expecting a hassled-looking courier to deposit something on the corner of his desk. He drives home, fingers tight around the steering wheel, and steels himself before going to the front door because he expects the brown box of a delivery or a slip of paper apologizing for having missed him.

For a whole month, Arthur hears nothing from Winters, and he’s left wondering, desperately, what the other agent might be up to — if the Forger is dead and someone out there has prevented the two of them from having a proper rematch. The phone number he’s never called moves from the wall of his cubicle to his wallet, folded and tucked behind his ID badge, and it’s only at the end of the month that he considers calling it. He taps it out on the number pad of his cell a dozen times one evening and half a dozen more the next day, but never actually makes the call because what if that’s what Winters is driving him toward? Arthur can’t know for sure the ultimate motives of a man he barely knows and maybe Winters will answer the phone, laughing and purring, “ _Got you, Mr. Wright_ ,” into the receiver.

(The bottle of finely made rum sitting on his dining table is the last gift he'd received from Winters. It's down to three-quarters already. Arthur keeps it next to a box of neatly ordered white cards and a sharpie. All he wants to do is write a name across the front of it that’s final and real, but he can’t and now may never and maybe calling will be _worth it_.)

Frustrated at how often his fingers itch to drag out the scant information he has on Winters, to see if maybe he’s missed something that might allow him to check up on the man now, Arthur lets himself get assigned to a mission in Düsseldorf, Germany with a team that is not up to his usual standards. He shuffles through the arrangements halfheartedly, ignoring how their Architect seems too twitchy and their Chemist, too timid, and can’t stop pouring his mind over why Winters might have stopped the gifts at all.

Then, just as Arthur’s about to resign himself to the idea of never knowing what’s happened to Winters in the end, the flight attendant scanning his plane ticket abruptly turns a winning smile at him and informs him that he’s been upgraded to first class seats instead of his usual coach. ("Welcome aboard American Airlines, Mr. Wright.") There’s no note to confirm his suspicions, but all the same, Arthur turns to look over his shoulder as he starts toward the plane, hoping that he’ll see evidence of Winters’ hand in this — but there’s nothing, _nothing_. Just tourists and businessmen and college students and not a single Forger in sight.

After four weeks of absolute silence, the message Arthur gets is this:

_I’ve still got my eye on you, Mr. Wright._

He should feel threatened — _he should_ — and there’s nothing about this situation that says he can be okay with Winters shadowing his every move. Winters is a foreign Extractor — from an allied country, yes, but not one that’s always on America’s side. He has every reason to hold a grudge against Arthur, finds out information far too quickly and has learned Arthur’s tastes far too easily. But no, instead of wariness, Arthur feels relief.

  


**DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY (APRIL 2008)**

The mission is a wreck. Arthur is as focused and meticulous as ever, but things just never seem to go the way he needs. It’s not a simple assignment — none of the ones that land on Arthur’s desk are — but relatively, convincing three embassy-bombing terrorists to reveal the identity and location of their ring leader should be a cake walk. It’s not the extraction that’s the problem, ultimately; it’s everything else.

Three terrorists turn into five and Arthur ends up having to call in for a second PASIV because the first burns through their stores of Somnacin faster than he feels is normal. The Chemist suggests that it just needs recalibrating. Arthur just shrugs, noting that he doesn’t feel any more sluggish than he normally does after a dream, that he can startle out of the dream as easily as he ever has. It’s better to be safe than sorry, though. So, he sends the PASIV back to America with the appropriate paperwork anyway and goes back to his hotel room in a tired haze.

He drops his briefcase next to the bed and pulls back the covers. He flicks on the television so he can have some background noise and starts undressing in a weary daze, so so ready to just shower and dive into a dreamless sleep. He splashes water on his face and scrubs wet hands through his short hair before reaching for a hand towel. He bets that he looks haggard in the mirror—

_Your resources are looking low these days, Mr. Wright. I hope you enjoyed your flight._

Arthur rips the note from the mirror, suddenly wide awake. It’s the same kind of note card as before — thick white card stock, textured, with an embossed trim — with Winters’ tight cursive scrawled across it. It’s rough between his fingers — familiar, comforting. He flips the card over, expecting the back to be blank like its predecessors.

Instead, there’s a fingerprint.

When Arthur manages to partition out an hour of free time the next day, he gets the print scanned. His leg is jumping under his palm and his fingers are helplessly rubbing against each other — working off excess energy as the computer system runs the print through the remote database. He wants it to pull up Winters’ face, wants to see a file attached to the features he remembers. Instead, the file the fingerprint matches belongs to his Architect.

There are documents upon documents attached to the Architect's file that hadn't been there the first time Arthur had looked him up. It's just a series of monetary exchanges and an itemization of each purchase. The names of the purchasers dead end immediately — probably altogether false — but it's the items that are concerning. Small amounts of the Somnacin drug, weapons, PASIV devices, sedatives, and a string of expenditures for flights before each big sale. Suspicions helplessly build up, but it's not anything that Arthur has the authority to act on. He ends up contacting his commander and brings the file to their attention, asking for advisement on the actions he should take from here.

The answer comes to him that afternoon in a little, plain text adjustment of his current orders. The Architect gets taken into custody and sent back to America for a trial. From then on Arthur's got the mission well in hand and a note card burning a hole in his breast pocket. He flies back to America with a letter of commendation from higher up for catching the officer's illegal actions, and even though he can't refuse it, it doesn't really belong to him. How long would that Architect have continued selling military property if Winters hadn't pointed him in the right direction?

When he gets home, Arthur takes out Winters' note card and lays it flat on his dining table — next to the box of its brothers, a sharpie, a dusty bottle of rum, and his cell phone. He's tired, he realizes as he pulls out his wallet and rummages until he finds the slip of paper folded behind his badge. The number scrawled on it has been rubbed to fading — softened with friction and time. Arthur smooths down the paper's folds against the table and pins the edges down with his fingers while he dials the number on his phone.

He wants to say: _Thank you — for helping me catch a criminal._

But that isn’t all encompassing. Yes, he’s glad for that. It will go in his file and how he handled it will probably factor into his next promotion, but it ignores all the other little things that led up to a note card in his hotel room.

He wants to say: _I’d like us to work together sometime._

Because he knows now how Winters works — carefully finding the edges of a person, digging his nails in and prying them open little by little until they’ve exposed everything — and he can’t help but be curious if Winters expands that method to everything else now that he’s been such an unexpected aid.

He wants to say—

Arthur jumps when his phone chirps; the number he'd dialed is wiped clean to announce an unknown number. The caller goes straight to voicemail without giving Arthur the chance to answer. A sweet jingle announces a left message a few minutes later, and Arthur calls to listen to it wearily, still considering what he might say if he calls Winters and hoping that he won’t hear a summons from his commander.

“Dear Mr. Wright.”

It’s not his commander.

“Dear Mr. Wright,” says Winters. “Welcome home. I hear you’ve returned safely and that you’ve caught an Architect who's behaved rather poorly. Congratulations.” Winters takes a quiet breath, like he’s giving his next words some considerable thought. “I just thought you should know that there’s been some interesting talk lately — maybe you’ve heard — about our dreamshare programs becoming a little more... shall we say... friendly. If and when this happens...”

Winters trails off — hesitating, Arthur thinks, to continue.

Then Winters’ chuckle melts, warmly, into Arthur’s ear. “Keep up the good work, Mr. Wright,” he says, “and watch your back.”

(Arthur wants to say: _I want to know you._ )

**MAGADAN, RUSSIA (JANUARY 2010)**

James is an agent of the highest caliber and with a propensity towards dangerous women and even more dangerous situations. Eames is as familiar with James’ footsteps as he is his own. James is quicksilver, suave, and roguishly charming when he wants to be. His mind is flexible to the situation, cuts through problems like a blade, and his focus is unparalleled. He’s reliable in his own way; Eames can fully depend on him to do his job though it might not be exactly in the way he predicts.

Eames has admired him since they were young, since before he knew what hero-worship meant. He’s emulated him in life and even forged him in dreams. James knows this and, Eames thinks, is probably amused. The point is that he doesn’t have to look up from his shaking hands to know that James is in the doorway. The very air changes around the other agent; it becomes supercharged, electric, but even in this moment, that atmosphere seems muted. When he does look up, James is wearing a parka — puffed white and fur-lined — and he’s holding a second, identical one near his hip.

“Mum sent me,” James says. He doesn’t gesticulate much; Jamie has always been the kind of guy that values efficiency in motion.

Moving seems like such an imposition, but Eames pushes himself to his feet and lets James help him into the parka. The world is fuzzy around the edges while James zips up the coat and then buttons over it, and while Eames is feeling all of five years old again, he lets James silently guide him towards a vehicle that is purring warmly against Russian winter.

“I hope you’re appreciating how much this means I trust you,” Eames mutters when James climbs into the driver’s seat. “Mum, too.”

James ruffles a hand through his hair, and Eames leans into it rather than grumbling. “I know,” James says. His hand drops over Eames’ eyes. “Go to sleep. We'll be home soon."

  


Eames’ mind is built for details. It’s not very orderly, and really, he ascribes the way his mind works as more like a web — fine threads that connect pieces of information so that tugging on one ripples through everything that corresponds. It’s this that’s keeping him from completely breaking down now. He can tug at the details of this mission — how he got to Russia, the names and abilities of the team he’d been working with, the dates of his arrival, the number for his hotel room, and the white car that had always been parked outside his hotel building whenever he came out of it — and everything falls into place except for the mission itself.

Dreams are usually hazy after he wakes up — even the ones through the PASIV. It’s the feelings in them that stick around: phantom pains of injury, the terror of death that crawls up his spine and wraps around his throat, and — if all goes according to plan — the bone-deep glow of a job well done. The feeling lingering in his chest now is muddled, confused, and multifaceted, and in the time it takes James to usher him into a sleek private jet, he remembers two very important details: the second PASIV device and Arthur.

He shifts and James, who is sitting across from him and looking as if flying in style with a champagne flute at his elbow is completely natural, eyes him from over his magazine.

“What are you thinking, Daniel?” James murmurs — not like he’s genuinely looking for Eames to provide an answer for him but like he’s looking for it all on his own, through his observations and knowledge.

Meanwhile, Eames is still pouring over details — the PASIV device and Arthur; Arthur and the PASIV — and there it is: the strings to tug. He pulls gently, more fearful of what he might find than of breaking the connections, and details start spilling out — faces, names, towering glass buildings that don’t exist in reality, the filtered feel of a room, the inconsistencies in Arthur’s personality that had thrown him so easily when he should have been more concerned with the pinch of the cannula in his wrist, the sound of Arthur’s voice shouting at him over (his own) distraught moan...

He says to James: “I think I’m going to retire for a little bit.”

That startles James, though not too visibly; all he gets is a flicker of the muscle in his jaw. It’s enough. James has been there since the beginning, since before Eames had even thought of the military and of dream sharing. He knows even without looking at Eames’ expression (no doubt grave, no doubt pensive) that the idea comes with a staggering amount of regret attached. He might not feel it now, not with Russia frosting over his skin still, not with its cold atmosphere embedded so deeply. Later, after he’s in warm air again and thawed the idea over flame, it will hit him.

James sets aside his magazine and leans forward. “You’re not the type to give up from a single bad encounter.”

“It’s not just a bad encounter,” Eames tries to explain, thinking about the room that had been so tiny, it had been claustrophobic, pressing in at him at all sides until all there had been was Arthur — Arthur and the PASIV. “And I’m not giving up.”

“Really.” James’ expression is mostly blank but for the tightening of his mouth.

“It’s just—.” Eames flounders for words and ends up pressing his fingers against his eyes again, trying to shut out the image of Arthur in that rickety wooden chair, tilted back from the force with which Eames had yanked the bag off his head. He breathes for a second... two seconds, and when he turns back to James, that legendary focus is narrowed right on him. “Have you ever noticed how our lives are slightly surreal?”

“No.”

“Well, they are,” Eames says. “We travel the world in expensive jets and expensive cars and have homes in every major city. We can be anyone — anything — whenever we need to be. I can duplicate twenty different accents. I know we both have an intimate and deeply personal knowledge of weapons and all they can do.” Eames leans forward in a complete copy of James’ posture and drags his hand through James’ hair, digging his fingers into the back of his skull. “With the right technology, I can be inside your mind.”

James’ jaw works around uncomfortably; Eames can tell that he’s trying so hard to understand, that the mimicry Eames has done has subconsciously registered as unnerving, but there’s no spark of epiphany. Though his chest swells with warmth, knowing that James is doing his best to be sympathetic, Eames knows that the next words out of his mouth will not be what he needs.

James edges out the words carefully, neither hiding his opinion on the matter nor being so blunt as to dissuade conversation: “So, you’re thinking something’s wrong with the way we live? It’s just a job, Danny.”

He sighs, “Jamie.” Eames drops his hand, drops his head and sinks back into his chair. “It’s not just a job. It’s a lifestyle. I don't want to quit at all, but after today, I — I have to make a decision about what I’m going to do now.”

The other man braces his head with two fingers to his temple and urges him on: “Tell me.”

James is the kind of man that invites trust. It’s not that he looks like he’s trustworthy — not at all, in fact — but he has an air about him that says that he can understand anything anyone sets in front of him, that nothing is too difficult for him to comprehend, even Eames’ convoluted thought processes. It’s as much comforting as it is terrifying. If he starts divulging now, it has to be all or nothing. If he tried lying, James would just poke holes in Eames' stories until he had the truth.

“You’ve never done it before — extraction or forging?” James shakes his head imperceptibly, confirming Eames’ question. No surprise there; James’ field is far more direct than Eames’ — more prone to visible, newsworthy collateral damage. “It’s an invasion,” Eames says flatly, “and an exploration. In the same way that you discover things about your targets, I do to the people I forge. But it’s deeper than that. I don’t just mimic or mime my way through a job. That would never work. For the duration of a job, I learn the way they think. All their secrets, all their quirks, every minuscule detail of their personality and lives that make them into a unique individual become mine. I become them for as long as I need to be.”

Eames twists a forefinger against his temple. “They’re all in here.”

James is listening, impassive but clearly still interested. Eames knows that James must find this conversation fascinating, but not for the content so much as what it reveals about Eames. They haven’t seen each other in so long that Eames wonders what changes he reveals. James steals a sip of Eames’ drink and lifts his brows at him over the glass. _Do go on._

“There’s a man I forged once,” Eames confesses. “Not a good man or even within the same universe as nice. He’s the sort that likes to see people scream and had been captured by our forces the week before the we were supposed to go after the Mark. He wasn’t pleased with having been taken into custody, but he liked my company and seemed happy enough to tell me every sordid detail of his life.

“I learned every technique he knew and all his reasons for liking the things he did. His reactions to scents and what they reminded him of. The way he favored blades over cruder instruments like pliers.”

Eames takes in a slow breath. “He was an artist just like me, in his own way.

“I only used him once on a job — the following week, when a Mark needed to be convinced to release some information.” Eames licks his lips. “It was both easier and harder than I would have liked.”

When Eames lapses into silence, James changes the way he sits in the chair. He stretches his long legs out until his calf is weighing down Eames’ shin. “So you forged a really fucked up person,” he summarizes. “What does that have to do with Russia?”

“I think he’s bleeding through,” Eames admits, looking at his hands. “The thing about working in dreams — especially being an Architect — is that you’re not supposed to work from memory, not supposed to get too close to reality, because then it becomes too easy to lose track of what’s real and what’s not. It’s dangerous. But that’s precisely what Forgers do. What I must do. It’s easy to get lost, to overlap your dream reality with actual reality and to be unable to keep track of where your fabrication ends and the hidden parts of you begin. That’s why Forgers’ careers are notoriously short. They — _we_... we burn out faster than Architects even. Forgers burn out, get lost, or go entirely mad... or they’re killed because they can’t let go of the forge.

“That’s bad enough — not being able to force yourself back into a shape that resembles the you that you know — but when people start trying to confuse you deliberately, to sabotage you, to plant ideas in your mind...” Eames shakes his head wearily, as if knocking away those implanted ideas, and abruptly changes course, “I'm pretty sure that I hurt someone during this mission and enjoyed it.”

James makes a sound of understanding — the building rumble of _ah, I see_ that says behind a closed mouth — and Eames can tell he’s not humoring him. Then he asks a question that completely blindsides Eames: “Who was it that you tortured?”

He blinks and shrugs, looking away. “He was just—," here, he stumbles. "He's just this American agent.”

Another sound from James — one remarkably similar to Mum’s tut. “For a Forger, you are a horrendous liar. What's his name?”

Eames huffs and swings back around to look at the other agent. "Arthur, alright? I met him during that fiasco in Myanmar—” here, James’ brows lift remarkably high connecting the new name to information with which he’s already familiar, “—and then when our branches were trying to do a little inter-agency cooperation last year, he poached me off of Worth’s team so we could work together.” Eames teases a loose thread from the inseam of his pants and flicks it to the side.

Taking another drink from Eames’ glass, James comments: “He must be an incredibly complicated person to have gathered your interest.”

“That’s just it,” Eames hisses, leaning close. “I know a lot of things about him, yes, but it’s superficial at best. I know how he works — efficient and quick and better than anyone I’ve ever seen. I know how he takes his coffee and the brand names of his suits. I know how he drives and the hotels he likes to stay at during long-haul jobs. But any forge I do of him would be flimsy, a mere reflection of the truth.”

He slumps into his seat. “I know nothing about him.”

There’s a slender smile working under James’s eyes. “How frustrating,” he says in a low faux-concerned tone. “Has Mum met him?”

“Yes,” Eames scowls. “Though not on purpose.”

“And?”

Eames sneers. “She found him absolutely charming, if you must know. Untrustworthy, though, which probably means she considers him to be like a son to her.”

James chuckles. “Well, am I right in thinking that you’re concerned over your behavior toward a projection,” he starts and then makes a vague gesture to the plane around them, “in a dream?”

Stealing back his glass from James’ clutches, Eames’ reply is a dark murmur. “That’s exactly the problem, Jamie. I’m not sure it was a dream.”

[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594824) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594824) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594992)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595185)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595230) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594992)


	4. Serial 3

**LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2009)**

Arthur is among a select grouping of dreamers that have been sent to London under the premise of advancing the European Dreamshare Program. It’s said that the program is younger than Project Somnacin, but there’s no official date of its beginning that Arthur can find. As far as he can tell, though, the program seems to have sprung up, fully formed, out of a collection of different studies conducted by MI6’s academic subsidiaries. Nonetheless, they’re here as a gesture of alliance, to show that America cares as much for its own skills as it does for the skills of the countries that stand beside it.

He considers himself loyal to his country — patriotic in the vague sense that he should be — but if he’s honest with himself, Arthur is much more interested in who he might meet when the plane lands.

Winters. The only Forger he knows that blurs the lines between genders and age. The only one who hasn’t sat back once Arthur has trumped him. The only one who has ever issued a challenge. The only one whose reputation has actually become stronger after a loss, instead of the other way around.

The anticipation of seeing Winters’ face — the slight leer under the guise of offense — itches under Arthur’s skin. His stride off their plane is so forceful that he actually shoves another of the officers out of the way in his eagerness.

On the tarmac, the only ones there to greet them is an older woman and her entourage. The line of her mouth is the most severe Arthur’s ever seen on a woman, and though her escorts are all at least a head taller than her, she shows no sign of being cowed or even really noticing their presence. Even the sweeping gaze she rolls over the group of Americans before her cuts like a knife, seeming to go straight to the heart of them and opening them up for assessment. The way her eyes flick skyward — only fleetingly, not so much asking the Lord for patience but rather setting the blame of her current situation squarely at His feet — and back down again to match her tight smile is just short of insulting.

“You may call me M,” she introduces herself with a curt tone and a firm handshake with the officer in charge. “I’ll be in charge of the affairs between our two programs. For the duration of your time here, you will be stationed with a team of your choosing. There will be an orientation meeting this afternoon during which you will meet potential teammates. I expect promptness and efficiency from every one of you. Are we clear?”

The officer in charge — an older man than Arthur, who was known only by his humorous title: Colonel Mustard — nods briskly. “Ma'am, crystal.”

M, now that the brunt force of her introduction is over with, is more congenial. “Moneypenny,” she gestures to the tall, youthfully beautiful woman next to her. “If you could see that their luggage is taken care of in the meantime?” Moneypenny scoots quickly to do just that. M turns on her heel, graceful and precise. “Follow me.”

  


The orientation itself nearly bores Arthur to tears. Everyone is issued badges with electronic swipes that will allow them into certain buildings and rooms and to check out PASIV devices for no longer than six hours at a time. All the Americans are sitting at the front of the narrow room and Arthur is keenly aware of the fifty-something dreamers from all across Europe sitting behind him. He risks a glance over his shoulder while a presenter is talking about international cooperation and team work.

Military though they may all be, none of them are truly in uniform. Crisp, yes, and still with the standardized cuts and clean-shaven faces, but their clothing is conservatively civilian all the way: khaki pants with ironed lines, long sleeved shirts and wind jackets, and buffed brown loafers. Comfortable clothing that won’t make dreaming difficult.

It’s because Arthur’s looking over his shoulder that he sees a man sneak in the rear entrance and perch himself along the back wall of the conference room, unobtrusively waving an apologetic hand to M, who is giving him a stern look. He’s broad; his shoulders hunch together when he crosses his arms and his hair is finely tousled out of his eyes in a way that is not entirely unappealing. His arms, like his shoulders, are big with a hint of ink showing through the white shirt, and Arthur finds they’re faintly familiar. That’s when the man scans the audience and catches Arthur looking. It’s only when he grins — shark sharp and full of pride — that Arthur recognizes him:

Winters.

The thrill that slides up Arthur’s spine, hot and electric, is completely warranted.

Arthur turns back to the presentation with impending satisfaction purring through him. The presenter finishes up with something hopeful and then dismisses them for a light lunch, during which the dreamers will mingle and talk shop and ultimately decide on teams. Arthur stands, slips past everyone to get to Winters and only pulls short when he sees that the other man’s already been cornered.

Arthur’s not the only one after him, it seems. That’s good, he thinks. It would be disappointing if he’d been the only one to recognize Winters’ skill, if seizing such a bright flame wasn’t a challenge.

“We make a good team, you and I,” says the second man to Winters. His voice is distantly recognizable to Arthur. “Why don’t we show these upstarts what we’re capable of?”

“Worth,” Winters starts coolly. His arms are still crossed, unfolding only to gesticulate. He’s shifting so that his weight is tilted away from Worth, so that there’s clear, definitive space between them. “I’m flattered, truly. But M says that this venture is about—”

“M doesn’t know anything about dreaming,” Worth cuts in, apparently ignorant of the way Winters' face shutters at the dismissal. “She’s a bureaucrat, nothing more. As powerful as she is, she can’t understand the extent of what we do here. It’s time we showed her that.”

“I agree.” Arthur chooses then to step in, coming in behind Winters’ shoulder. “Which is why I think Winters has decided to work only with the best.”

Worth is a very handsome sort of man, Arthur decides, with a heavily masculine jaw softened by a generous mouth and dark, liquid eyes. He looks the sort that’s used to getting what he wants, whenever he wants it — an Extractor, then. One who gestures with broad palms and thick, blunt fingers. Handsome, Arthur reiterates to himself, but also unsavory. Arthur can’t imagine he’s very good at his job at all.

It’s an observation that only solidifies when Worth shifts to take in Arthur’s presence, leaning in with a smile that’s an uneven mixture of condescending and placating. “You must be one of the Americans. Sorry to say I don’t recognize you.”

Arthur doesn’t bother with a reply. He’s already managed to identify Worth as the recklessly divulgent Englishman that had pointed him in Winters’ direction after Myanmar. His additional observations haven’t enamored him. He touches Winters on the arm and waits for him to turn before saying, “I’m picking you, Winters. I want you on my team.”

Winters’ reaction is devoid of surprise and all pleasure. Genuine, Arthur hopes, but it’s hard to say with a Forger. “Why, Mr. Wright,” he says with sly eyes. “Like I could turn down a man of your caliber. After all, there’s so much to make up for after Myanmar.”

“ _You’re_ Mr. Wright?” says Worth off to the side, completely ruining the moment. “You can’t be over twenty!”

“You should get a better Point Man, Mr. Worth,” Arthur tells him, not even hiding the dismissive tone in his voice. “Your research is lacking.”

Winters follows without argument when Arthur pulls at his elbow, and Arthur is glad to hear Worth's outraged sputtering behind him to make him feel better about how nervous he feels walking beside the man who has become his rival, his challenger... easily the most fascinating and terrifying person of which Arthur can think.

"Staking your claim early, Mr. Wright?" Winters asks. "I'm not sure if I should be flattered or afraid."

"I can't afford to let someone who's been able to spy on me for the last year be on an opposing team," Arthur corrects. Even though it's a big fat lie, it's got the right kind of logic to it. The truth is that he doesn't want to let Winters out of his sight now that he has him.

Winters laughs like Arthur's said the most charming thing and really, how did anyone forget the face of a man with this level of charisma? While Arthur's trying to piece together how Winters could possibly set aside such a strong personality without it bleeding through every Forge, Winters switches gears seamlessly.

"I assume that you already have our teammates chosen," he says, turning so that he's kind of in Arthur's path. Arthur takes a couple more steps before he actually stops, and they end up circling each other for those steps. "But if you don't," Winters continues, "I can name some."

"Thanks," Arthur replies and is pleasantly surprised to feel able to accept the offer at face value, "but I already have some people in mind." He reaches out and pushes Winters back with his fingertips. "Do you know how to get in touch with me after?"

"Yes," Winters answers.

"Of course." — when has Winters ever not known exactly how to contact Arthur, wherever he is — "After orientation today, then. I'll arrange the rest."

Arthur spends the rest of lunch chatting up dreamers, confirming the teammates he’d already decided on during the flight over. People flock to him, hoping to snag a position on his team. Arthur coolly tells them all that he has his team already, that he’s sorry, but another time, perhaps. It won’t happen, of course. The people he’s chosen have all been in the business for a while — not so short a work history as to be blinded by the long list of accomplishments Arthur brings with him, nor so long as to have become disenchanted with him. As much as he dislikes being fawned over (because it brings with it so many different problems) there’s value to be found in how much easier it is for Arthur to teach them, easier still when they've been around long enough to recognize that what Arthur brings to the table is worth their time.

Winters is not with him, not really, but Arthur is conscious of him always being somewhere in the vicinity, a unmistakable presence that burns between his shoulder blades. They’re never in the same conversations, yet Arthur can’t help but feel like Winters is glued to his hip, changing groups always just before or just after Arthur has decided to move on.

They dance around each other, never catching the other’s eye, not quite touching when they pass, and by the time Arthur has arranged his team at the end of the hour, he feels warm under the collar. The punch doesn’t help with that, so he undoes the first button at his throat. It really doesn’t help that Winters’ visage appears through the crowd at the very moment the button is loose.

“You work very quickly for a man of your age, Wright,” comes the comment from beside Arthur’s shoulder. It’s M. She’s looking wistfully at Winters. “Though it helps that Worth is a bit of a bastard.”

His response is noncommittal for the most part. “Tomorrow, we start teaching.”

“Yes,” M replies and seems to laugh a little to herself. “Winters will give you a run for your money, I’m sure. So will Worth, for that matter,” she warns.

“I look forward to it,” Arthur tells her and isn’t surprised in the least at how honest he sounds.

He can’t wait to see what Winters can really do when given full rein. He wonders how quickly he can forge, how much work he has to put into it and how much stress it takes before Winters loses control completely. (On the last one, he suspects a great deal, remembering a narrow glinting blade cutting through a young girl’s body and her grey-grey eyes looking at him while her blood spilled out and the world trembled.) Despite all the rumors he’s heard about the other agent — or perhaps because of them — Arthur has been left with an insatiable curiosity this last year and a half. Having the opportunity to go toe-to-toe directly with Winters — every day for the next six months — is a gift he isn’t about to hand back.

M turns to look at him fully and whatever she finds when she looks at him must amuse her greatly because her mouth has twisted together to hide a smile. “Well, good luck,” she tells him, eyes fairly sparkling with mischief. “You may need it sooner than you think.”

Arthur looks after her when she abandons him with those words. The dreamers part for her like water around a stone as she makes her way directly to Winters’ side. She touches his shoulder and he bends to her immediately, listening as she tells him some secret into his ear. When the Forger glances up to look at him, Arthur looks away, conscious of having been watching, so he misses the way Winters’ expression turns focused, how his gaze goes from appreciative to shrewd.

  


“Alright,” Arthur begins, unlatching the silver case on the table. “I’m going to set up the PASIV for fifteen minutes. Show me what you’ve got.”

“ _Now_?” demands the startled Architect with cap of curls all around her head. “You haven’t even told me what you want me to build.”

“I haven’t,” Arthur agrees. “Build anything you want, do anything you want. I’ll be the subject for this dream. You guys are going to keep me from killing you.”

The Architect, Mallorie, gapes for a few more seconds, then her mouth thins with resolve. Beside her, Winters looks fairly bored, though he’s the first to grab the IV that Arthur is holding out. He nudges the man next to him, a fellow Point Man named Rhodey, and quips: “Ten says he never finds me.”

Rhodey sighs wearily and settles himself comfortably in one of the dreaming beds as he puts in an IV lead. “No bet.”

Arthur lifts his chin. Winters responds in kind and his smile is slow like molasses, saturated with impertinence, when Arthur says: “You’re on.”

He’s got a tightness around his spine now that won’t go away. This is exactly the feeling Arthur had hoped for: that thrill of the hunt, that excitement brought on by grey-grey eyes that don’t back down and don’t give up, the heavy and all-consuming sensation of being tracked by someone who is just as fast, just as clever. _Bring it on; show me everything you’ve got._

Eagerly, Arthur plunges the Somnacin trigger and tips himself back onto his dreaming bed. He tries not to think about it, to let the Somnacin flow over him like water, but for a while there, all Arthur sees is Winters with his cheeky grin going right up to his eyes before he’s sinking into the warm, red space of a diner in the middle of town.

“Is there anything I can get for you, sugar?” asks the waitress as her manicured nails tap against the scratched plastic of the table top. Her name tag is overlarge — pinned like a white business card to the top of her breast pocket. “Coffee, maybe?” Her bubble gum pops between her lips and she pushes bright blonde hair over her shoulder. “It looks like your flight took a toll on you.”

“Sure,” Arthur tells her — anything to send her on her way — scanning the diner before deciding that he should explore. “Thanks.”

The waitress smiles in such a way that says she knows he’s going to be on his way as soon as she turns her back. No surprise, since she’s his projection, and Arthur dismisses it as he stands. After she turns to grab a chipped china cup and the coffee pot, she glances back at him and watches blandly as Arthur exits the diner.

The world Mallorie has built is perfect. The diner melts into a row of homes that look alarmingly similar without being identical — the kind of homes Arthur sees in closed communities with gates at the entrance and security for hire — and beyond those are towering spiral buildings that twist up into white clouds. He likes it here. It’s orderly, precise and peaceful, and expectations, while unspoken, are understood. The thing is that Arthur can’t quite see how this can become the maze it needs to be.

The space is too open.

An odd sense of danger — unusual in a setting like this but as certain as the pull of a trigger — teases at the back of his mind. He turns in the direction of it and everyone turns to look with him. He doesn’t see the projections swarm the source of the danger, but his alarm passes, his nerves stop being on edge and a part of him knows that the Point Man (Rhodey) has just been eliminated.

What a shame, Arthur thinks sadly. He’d expected him to last longer.

There are several others to expect. The Architect he’ll do his best to find last, though it’s hard to ignore shifts in the environment and harder still to keep his subconscious under control. There’s also the Extractor — O’Neill; young but suave already, with an attitude that seems beyond his years. Arthur can afford to find him next. There are two Forgers. One is Scarbrough — an impish young man that he has hopes for but no illusions about his lack of experience, despite the good reviews of his work — and the other, of course, is Winters.

Arthur turns between two houses and their brick fades into glass and smooth, polished wood panelling of a door. The bar behind it is a beautiful piece of architecture, and his mind itches when he feels the landscape behind him shifting, changing... becoming malleable under the Architect’s guidance. Mallorie is testing him, he feels, but killing her would only end the dream faster.

“Stop it,” he hisses out of the corner of his mouth — and there she is, poised in the doorway Arthur’s just stepped through and it’s a street behind her instead of an unsuspecting neighborhood. Mallorie sags, disappointed at having been caught but looking as if she’d expected it, and drops into a bar stool beside him without a word.

The bartender puts a cup of coffee in front of Arthur in a chipped china cup and carries on washing glasses and making nameless, identical drinks for everyone else at the bar. Arthur watches him suspiciously, remembering his order from the diner, but the barkeep doesn’t look up, except when the door to the bar opens and in steps Winters.

Arthur flips back the side of his coat, thumbing the holster against his ribs, and watches as Winters saunters up to him. His walk is lazy — too much hip and staggering confidence — and his expression as he leans against the bar near Arthur is on the verge of a yawn. When Winters says, “So when are we going to really do something fun,” in a tone that isn’t at all interested, Arthur pauses.

“Well?” urges Mallorie, confused by Arthur’s hesitance. “Don’t you have a bet to win, Mr. Wright?”

That he does, but something isn't quite right. He’s not sure whether it’s the frank (and a little hostile) boredom sloughing off Winters’ body in waves or how the man doesn’t even seem to be invading Arthur’s personal space — or even, the way all the projections (bartender included, for all that Arthur had suspected him) have started to peer warily at Winters as they walk past him. It’s a combination of all those things, but mostly has to do with how Winters, when he’d caught Arthur’s eye from across the room, hadn’t even cracked a smile.

“Oh,” Arthur says when the realization hits him and this time draws his gun without hesitation.

It’s a good forge, he supposes, but it depends on who’s supposed to be fooled. Given enough time, maybe the Forger would get it right next time. “Winters” watches Arthur raise his Glock with a detached sort of interest, and Arthur isn’t fooled at all.

“See you later, Scarbrough,” says Arthur cheerily and is pleased by his shocked expression before he pulls the trigger.

The young man at the far table doesn’t flinch when Scarbrough falls to the ground, and he doesn’t watch when the bartender deigns to drag the fresh body out of the bar, muttering about keeping the place clean for customers. Arthur only really notices him because a slim young girl in jeans and a shirt with a plunging neckline perkily peeks her way into the bar and takes a seat across from him.

Arthur can usually tell when he’s been extracted on. It feels like a distraction or deja vu — a part of his mind being gently and quietly fished through for bits of information — the sensation that he should’ve paid attention to something elsewhere. But as the young man — O’Neill — starts talking with the girl, Arthur feels none of those things. The girl hedges at his questions, never really answering as she blows a bubble with her bright pink gum, but she smiles brightly and eagerly like she wants nothing more than to tell O’Neill everything he wants to know.

“If you could keep a secret anywhere in the world—” starts O’Neill and the girl flutters her lashes thoughtfully and touches her fingertips to her very full mouth.

Arthur, against his own instincts, looks to the safe behind the bar. The Extractor sees it.

O’Neill wraps a lock of her fire-red hair around his fingers and brings it to his mouth as he asks her: “What are your favorite numbers, beautiful?”

The girl smiles and it’s shy and sharp and Arthur is about to shoot O’Neill right here, right now, with the end of the dream booming around his head, when she looks up at him—

Grey-grey eyes and her pretty, heavy-lipped mouth turning over the numbers: “Three. Ten. Forty-two.”

The realization jolts him right back to Myanmar for all of a second before he’s sitting up to Winters’ rich laughter and the impersonal, tan walls of the workshop. Mallorie is snarking at Arthur already as she tidies up the PASIV, saying that this is exactly why they don’t have Architects in dreams, that that’s why Architects just build in the real world without actually taking the plunge. Meanwhile, Rhodey is just behind her with bright eyes, looking like he wants to know how Arthur got such _wonderfully violent projections._

Off to the side, Scarbrough looks just short of livid while Winters casts him a shark grin and asks, laughing still: “Were you hoping to make him think that I’d lost? What an idea!”

After Scarbrough shrugs him off, saying that it was worth a shot, O’Neill leaps on Winters, saying: “You could’ve told me I was extracting on you instead of a projection.”

To which Winters replies: “Isn’t it your responsibility to tell the difference?”

When O’Neill scoffs, sulking a little about Forgers who are too damn good, Winters leans back on his elbows on his dreaming bed — stretched out and languid — and looks to Arthur with dancing eyes. “Another go, then, Mr. Wright? Or have you seen all you need to?”

Not nearly enough, Arthur thinks fiercely as numbers thrum through his mind — _three, ten, forty-two_. He hasn’t seen nearly enough.

**VENTNOR, ISLE OF WIGHT, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2010)**

Eames’ mother is not waiting at the airport and James does not drive him to Headquarters to her office. Instead, their car arrives at her little white-walled home on the edge of the ocean in South England; it’s a place with which Eames is intimately familiar and is ultimately more wonderful to see than he could have expected. The wheels crunch over a gravel path to the front door, and by the time Eames stumbles out of the car, M is already on the porch, welcoming him into her arms.

“Oh, Daniel,” she croons, squeezing him around the shoulders. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

His voice is muffled against her shoulder. “I don’t know, mum.”

He tilts his nose toward her neck. He can smell her — subtle and distinct and far from softly feminine, but womanly nonetheless (one of her few concessions in a man’s game). This is something that few could ever replicate and it serves to pull his feet towards the ground finally. The feel of the rigid posture that can’t fully mask the concern in the slope of her shoulders, the fierce clutch of her fingers against him, and her soothing warmth all start tucking his loose threads back into place, at least marginally.

She cups him around the jaw with both hands, wiping his cheekbones with her thumbs as she looks down at him, assessing and concerned. “Yes,” she says, apparently having found what she was looking for. She tucks his hair neatly behind his ears and smooths down the shoulders of his jacket. “Well, get inside. There’s tea in the kitchen and biscuits in the cooler. Clean up and get changed while I talk to your brother.”

Eames nods and covers her hands with his for a moment before slipping past her. He looks over his shoulder at James, who has their bags looped over one shoulder, and James jerks his head to the side: Go on, don’t worry.

He goes (but he keeps worrying).

  


With a family like his — spies, every last one of them in some form or another, and professional secret keepers — holding onto personal details becomes one of the hardest things to do. For others, it might be strange to know the person who raised you by a single letter, but for Eames, it has always been a kind of comfort. M is and always will be Mum.

Eames is not an Architect. He has the imagination but not the training. Give him images, give him details and memories, and he can create the whole world, but the feel of places, the feel of environments — that’s the tricky part. This place — this home — can be summoned in his mind as easily as breathing, but it will never feel right. Something will be off every single time. Sure, the details will be exact but in his dreams, his childhood home is too empty to be anything other than a glaring fake.

So it’s with trembling gratefulness that he slides his fingers against the walls to either side of him, feeling their grain, ducking under the photographs, and slipping over the sharp cuts in the door frame of the kitchen where he and James had marked their heights. He bends as he peeks into the living area; there — behind the sofa and hidden in the shadow of a wicker table — is a splash of color; it’s faded and most of it is scrubbed away, smeared across the white paint. The sight of it makes Eames smile. (Mum had been horrified to come home at two am to find the two of them crowded together behind the sofa, which had been pushed away from the wall to make room, with packages of snacks and chocolate and a bucket of Sharpies.)

He lingers in the open space, looking out of the windows pointed toward the cove. The light being let in is almost too bright and he has to take a moment to realize that there's just so much vibrancy and color. It's a sharp contrast from Russia — so much that the details sting in his eyes like salt. There are crowds of people on the beach — not many since it's January after all, but fishermen and netters and dedicated sorts — and trees branch in from around the edges of the balcony, stretching around the railings with bare branches. With the onset of winter, the ocean is darkened even in sunlight, a thick stripe of deep color that seeps into the cool, soupy grey of the cove, then the rich taupe of beach sand and then the splashes of color from the beach town along the main road.

Each sight is familiar, achingly so. He knows the rocky edges of the headland and the feel of the beach's rough grain melting into smooth pebbles under his feet. He knows the salt-scents and the heat of summers here. The tight, steeply sloped pathways are ones that he has run down in his youth. He's eaten the fresh crab from Wheeler's and spent long afternoons fighting a losing battle with an ice cream cone while the gulls scream above his head. He lets the memories sink through his skin, feeling more like himself than he has in a long while.

Turning to the kitchen, he finds tea (black leaves blended with strawberries and flowers; mum’s personal blend made at one-hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit and left to cool) and biscuits (shortbread, somewhat hard from sitting in the refrigerator but otherwise fantastic) exactly where M said they would be. He pours himself a cup, scoops brown sugar into it, tucks a few circles of shortbread into his pocket and meanders upstairs.

The stairs are painted white like the walls, but it’s oak underneath. The house is old enough that the paint in the middle of the steps and the top of the railing has started to wear away, revealing the polished wood. At the top of the stairs is the master bedroom and M’s office. Further on is the bedroom he shared with James until they were well into teen-hood (until James had turned eighteen and signed up with the Royal Navy Reserve) and the bath, which he glances into (three toothbrushes are waiting in a holster by the sink; fresh towels are folded on a little table by the tub) but ultimately turns away from in favor of his childhood bedroom.

It... It’s not exactly the way he remembers it (but then memories are funny that way). James’ side of the room has definitely changed — a bigger bed, cream coloured sheets, and a casual suit jacket are hung up on the closet door — whereas his side is relatively untouched. The sheets are a burnt orange and the bed frame is red and everything about it reminds him of his youth. And speaking of...

Eames kneels down and digs around under his bed for a box he knows is there. His fingers catch on a loose floor board and he digs under it, pries it up and reaches into the space underneath for the shoebox. The contents in here are precious in their own way — nothing of value as far as money is concerned, but their worth is undefinable to Eames now.

“Feeling better, Danny?” asks James. He’s braced against the door frame with their luggage in hand; he peers down at Eames, who is sitting on the floor by his bed with a shoebox full of trinkets cradled between his knees, and it seems to take great effort not to look concerned.

“Yeah,” Eames says, nodding. “Much.” He scratches at the side of his leg. “Thanks. You know, for picking me up. I hope you weren’t busy.”

“Tokyo.” He shrugs, takes a few uneasy steps into the bedroom and drops the luggage in the middle of the floor. “It was nothing I wouldn’t have dropped when I got the message.”

Eames sniffs. “I should hope the message was suitably traumatic and terrified.”

James doesn’t comment, but he does reach into the shoebox and pluck a pair of red dice from within. Eames scoops out a pair of cards and a taps the flat of them against a column of chips against the wall of the box.

“Care for a game?” Eames asks and grins when James’ mouth twists. “I can’t imagine that your skills have become rusty with disuse.”

They end up around the table in the kitchen, poker chips stacked on either side. M is dealing; she’s on the phone and her laptop all at the same time, but she still deals their game and slaps the backs of their hands when she catches them cheating. (It’s often enough but not always, and James and Eames will share a look whenever they’ve gotten away with it.)

Between the two of them, Eames has always been the better poker player. James might be able to count his cards and do the statistics in his head as easily as mum, but he reads people like they’re collections of reactions instead of whole, sustainable pieces of Architecture. Eames reads people like books — from beginning to end, indices and appendices and every page in between — and accepts that the cards may change nothing (or everything) about a person’s behavior. James might have a poker face that no one can rival — as expressionless as he can make himself — but Eames has forges for that. Let them see what they want, let them guess, they’ve no idea who they’ve come to the table with, they think she’s just a pair of breasts with long legs, but she’s got a lucky streak a mile wide and—

Eames folds suddenly. James stops smiling and M stops talking and they both turn toward him when he shudders.

“Danny,” James says and lays his hand over Eames’.

“I’m fine.” He grits his teeth. His hands are shaking. “Just ah...” He clears his throat, reaches for his tea, and slides his hand out from under James’. “Just not feeling like myself is all.”

Nothing at all but a woman’s quiet laugh filters through his mind. (Cecile had been a beautiful poker player. She had a way of being just that lucky, just that good and could charm up any player, no matter how smarmy, until they didn’t mind that they were losing and just kept betting higher and higher.) Eames picks up his cards again and fights to spread them in his right hand instead of his left. He flips the top chip from his stack over the fingers of his left hand — over and over and over and under the knuckles and begin again — just to keep from switching the cards. He flips and turns the chip between his fingers; he sweeps his thumb over the grooves and over the raised pattern in the center. It becomes enough that part of his mind is busy building a mental image of the poker chip while the rest of him is still messing with the cards. (Cecile’s urges — to drop the ten of hearts because it’s useless, son, but keep the five and seven of spades — are all but shoved from his mind.)

  


Eames has at least three days on him — far more of a head start than he’d had during Myanmar — but Arthur thinks that has to do with the man he’d seen take Eames into custody. (Custody is such a harsh word. It sounds more official than the way Eames had utterly relied on the other man’s guiding hand would suggest, but everything about that man had class and superior and danger etched into him that all Arthur had been able to think was: special agent.)

Eventually, Arthur tracks Eames to the Isle of Wight, England, to a home parked right up against the beach with trees tangled around its base. There are a lot of buildings built close to the water, including a slew of inns, a diner and a lighthouse, but the white house is the one truly set apart with no discernible path to it that Arthur can see. He keeps his distance and tries not to feel like he’s being obsessive with his rented houseboat and a telescope angled toward the windows of the home, looking for Eames’ broad-shouldered figure shuffling within its depths. There are two patios on the rear of the house — the lower one more obscured by foliage — and floor-length windows along each. He spots Eames once with a box hefted in both arms, walking onto the second floor balcony. He looks well — a little vacant perhaps, and small, buried in a thick coat and scarf, but the panicked man from Russia isn't immediately apparent. Reassured for now, Arthur guides the boat back to the port, planning to be gone the next morning.

Though he’s unable to explain why he feels better for it, seeing Eames alive leaves Arthur satisfied enough that he goes through the motions of arranging for his transport home without complaint. He supposes that it’s just good to know that Eames can bounce back from the man he’d seen slipping and clawing away from the PASIV — from the man that had looked up at him with such horrified shock in the dream before Arthur had woken him with a bullet.

Business accomplished, Arthur heads back to his hotel room ready for a good night’s sleep and ends up jerking his gun from its holster when the light across the room flicks on. His grip tightens around his weapon when he realizes that the woman sitting primly in the chair by the window is the same woman that had interrogated him so thoroughly, but his trigger finger doesn’t so much as curl from where it rests along the muzzle. It’s a good thing that he’s been trained so well, he supposes, or else there might be a mess of a situation whenever the muzzle of a gun presses against the back of his skull.

“Drop the gun, if you please,” says the low, gravelly voice of the man behind him. Arthur does as he’s told, letting the gun slip from his grip and swing from his thumb. “Hands up.” The man takes the gun from his hand and tucks it into his pocket before nudging him forward. “After you.”

Keeping his hands up, Arthur nods politely to the woman in the chair. “M,” he greets and can’t help but notice the way the gun presses that much harder into his skull.

She inclines her head. “Mr. Wright,” she says, waving the agent behind Arthur off. “Or should I call you ‘Arthur’?” She is not smiling. “You get around quite a lot, don’t you?” She indicates the bench at the foot of Arthur’s hotel bed. “Have a seat. Let’s chat.”

The agent pushes Arthur onto the bench with a hard hand to the shoulder, and Arthur snaps a, “This seems familiar,” at her before shooting the man a sour look.

He stifles his double-take, recognizing the agent as the same one that had picked up Eames. His dirty blond hair has the same cut as Eames and his blue eyes are so close in expression to Eames’ grey that Arthur’s mind starts going through leaps and bounds before he can help himself.

M interrupts his thoughts. “What are you doing here, Arthur?”

“Vacation,” Arthur tells her mildly, still looking at the agent (at the age lines around his mouth, at the way he tucks his hand into his pocket like he’s not completely on edge). “I like the beach.”

She folds her hands across her lap. “Arthur,” she scolds. “Don’t pull that shit with me.”

Arthur turns toward M with a slight smile — vaguely flirtatious. “The view from this room is spectacular.”

Her mouth twitches — amused, but not impressed. “Yes, I suppose an agent like you would think so, seeing as you’ve been snooping around one of my agents a little too closely.” Her back settles against the chair firmly, shoulders squared off. “What is your interest in Winters?”

It’s the look in her eyes more than anything else that has him saying, “Eames is here?” in a faux-casual tone and when her eyes narrow at him in the same calculating manner that he remembers, he continues: “How unusual. Last I heard, he was on a mission in Russia. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“We have no agents in Russia,” M says very flatly. Arthur is sure this is the platform of her defense. No one was in Russia; nothing happened in Russia — but something had and Arthur may have to be the one to figure it out.

“If you had, then you would know what I want with Eames.” He can’t help but eagerly await her answer; she has yet to cease surprising him with her ability to turn his words back against him. It’s with pleasure that he watches her bristle slightly before she glances sharply to the agent looming so casually at Arthur’s shoulder and back to his face. (He’s hit a nerve then. Excellent.)

“Mr. Eames is granted more latitude than your average agent, Mr. Wright — as you well know.” Her meaningful look spoke of inter-agency paramilitary actions that required more paperwork than toppling most South American governments ever had, with twice as much blacking out. (Not that either type of file would be released — blacked out or not.) “What interests me is what business you might have had in Magadan, and whether I should shoot you now or later.” Her voice is crisp and cold — as if shooting him was a foregone conclusion.

Having barely escaped such a fate the last time they’d met, Arthur picks at the possible ways in which he can reply. It's no surprise to him that she knew where he'd flown in from, especially when she found out he was here at all. It's hard to trust her with his thoughts considering everything that had happened in London, but if Eames trusted her enough to run to her for sanctuary... 

“Eames is a superb agent,” he admits slowly. “Under normal circumstances, it might be easy to lose track of him for months at a time. However,” he stresses and this time, it’s the agent at his shoulder that shifts from one foot to the other, leaning away from Arthur (reexamining him, likely). “However,” he continues, “with the proper resources and information, having him drop off the face of the planet, even for a few days, becomes disconcerting.”

M’s expression barely changes at his confession, layered though it is, but he recognizes it in the softening around her eyes and mouth. (He remembers that same expression being tilted toward him from a very different face, but the subtle changes are the same and Arthur wonders...)

“Yes,” she agrees with some gravity. “That can be...” She pauses, choosing her words carefully before deciding on: “...unsettling to those with a vested interest in his well-being.” There's another glance at the agent, who remains stonily impassive at the proceedings. "Let's make one thing clear, Mr. Wright. I don't trust you, and however much Eames might deny it, you are part of the problem he's dealing with now. I'll be damned to let him face it alone when I can give him one better."

  


M takes him to the white house on the beach. It's crowded in by trees and guarded by a fence that comes up to Arthur's waist. The road to the house is tight, with barely enough space for the car to turn onto the gravel path to the narrow porch stretched across the front of the house. He takes the time to get a good look at it while the agent (James, he's learned) and M lead him in.

The house is worn but mostly in good repair. The paint is peeling at the edges of every corner and the garden is overgrown with vines and untrimmed bushes, but the stairs don't squeak under his feet and the front door barely complains when James opens it. It's a very normal looking place, he decides as he takes in the tan sofa and the glass coffee table decorated with a flower arrangement and books. The floor plan is open with a clear sight from the front door through the living room to the kitchen, and though the house seemed crowded from the outside, the windows overlooking the water let in so much light that Arthur hardly feels it.

"So," Arthur starts, turning in the middle of the foyer as he drops his coat to his elbows. He folds it and sets it over the back of one of the chairs. "What is this place? A safe house of some kind?"

"No," answers M with a serious depth to her voice as she steps past him to the kitchen. "It's his home."

Arthur's eyes dart around him immediately, picking out the details he'd ignored on the initial glance. There are small, framed photographs spread across tables everywhere, cataloguing Eames' growth through his childhood years, and Arthur can't help but get a closer look at them. This is the history that he's been unable to find all this time, no matter how hard he's dug — Eames as a budding artist and a playful boy, Eames in his school uniform, and Eames glowering with his casted wrist flung around the neck of an older boy with bright blue eyes. 

Brothers, Arthur thinks as he picks up the photo to look at how the two boys are up in each other's space, scratched up from what was probably a fight and Eames looking worse for the wear because of it.

"He was very rambunctious when he was younger," comments James from behind Arthur's shoulder. "He hasn't changed much."

"I can't imagine he has," Arthur replies, setting the frame down again.

As he gathers his coat to hang in the closet, Arthur wonders if it's really a smart idea to be here. Even with London behind them like bad blood, he's uncertain about what kind of welcome he'll receive. The dream level he'd seen in Russia isn't exactly the hope he'd like to have on his side, but it's the best he's got. 

M makes a tray of tea and sandwiches and pushes it into James' hands. "It's past lunch," she says, lifting her chin toward the stairs. "You know where he'll be."

James nods, adjusting the tray in his hands. "Mum." He snags Arthur's attention as he starts upstairs. "Hey, I'll show you the way."

The way is upstairs and through the bedrooms to the balcony. James walks quickly, and while Arthur is keeping pace, he manages to recognize some of Eames' luggage sitting at the foot of one of the beds. He spins as he walks, trying to file away the details he sees — the color of the bedspread, the solid wood framing, and the closet door that's ajar to show packed clothes and boxes.

Past him, well onto the balcony by now, James is making his greetings. "Mum sent lunch."

"Wonderful," comes from Eames. It's enough to make Arthur turn from the bedroom and look for himself if Eames is really as bad off as he's feared. Eames reaches to help steady the tray as James sets it down. "I'm starved."

Eames is in a heavy, black sweater with a collar high around his neck. It narrows down his shoulders and hides away any lines of tension there might be. He moves easily enough, though, without hesitation or reserve, and when James tells them that there's a guest, Eames is wearing a smile as he twists in his seat to look.

His expression falters when he recognizes Arthur, and there's a quick, accusing look shot in James' direction. "What's this then?" he asks.

"M's idea," James explains, shrugging. "We thought it might help."

Arthur steps forward as James leaves, apparently content to let the two of them solve the situation on their own. "I'd leave," he offers, "but the damage has already been done." Even if he left now, he would probably have more details on Eames' childhood than any other dreamer in the world. "I just wanted to check on you."

Eames is usually capable of hiding whatever he's feeling behind a projected facade, but as Arthur comes closer, there's nothing masking the way Eames eats up his every move. As usual, Arthur itches with the knowledge of being observed so closely, but even then, he knows that Eames' gaze carries a different purpose than it had in London. Where before it was about digging out fresh details, mindlessly invasive and shamelessly curious, it's lighter now — like Eames is breathing in his superficial qualities just for reassurance.

"I'm fine," Eames says, "so really, you can leave."

Pulling out one of the chairs next to Eames, Arthur sits. "Funny how M gave me the impression that I wasn't allowed to leave until she let me."

"Not in so many words, I imagine," Eames grouses as he pushes the tray of tea and sandwiches to the side in favor of a box of trinkets. 

Arthur chooses one of the teacups from the tray. It's already gone cool in the winter air, but it feels good to drink it. It gives him something to do with his hands anyway. "Do you want to talk about what happened in Russia?"

"Not especially," he says as he digs out several items from the box and sets them aside — dice, poker chips, coins, a pocket watch, and a small tool set. "Plus, it's not really any of your business, now is it?"

"Eames—"

It's not true. They both know it's not true because Arthur had found a projection of himself in Eames' dream — a projection that was dead, that had been killed for whatever reason. If the dreamers Eames was dealing with had been attempting anything like what Arthur suspects, then it had everything to do with Arthur. Eames can't possibly be expecting him to believe otherwise.

"I've talked about it already," snaps Eames, not looking at Arthur at all now as he turns the pocket watch over in his hands. "To M and to James. It's got nothing to do with you."

"There was a projection of me down there," Arthur argues. He sets aside his tea and leans toward Eames like being closer would somehow press his point. "When you ran, you were running from me."

Eames is quiet for a while, but still avoiding eye contact. He opens the tool set at his elbow and finds a slim flat head to pry open the back of the pocket watch. There's an inscription on the inside that he runs his thumbs over, but Arthur can't read it. Picking up a very slender screwdriver, Eames seems intent on taking the watch apart, but he just sits on the verge of moment, intense and rigid and radiating frustration.

"It's not you," Eames repeats. This time he lifts his eyes in sections — touching base at where Arthur sits, to his hands, to his shoulders and then finally to meet Arthur's gaze. His look is tentative. "This is no one's fault but my own."

"If you're sure," Arthur hedges and shifts to rise from his seat.

He lays a comforting touch to the back of Eames' hand before rising, however, and Eames jerks away as if stung. While Arthur arches a brow, more certain than ever about his decision to stay if he's needed, Eames leans to the far side of his seat and covers his eyes with his hand for a moment, rubbing at his face.

Arthur's hand still rests on the table after Eames had jerked away from it. "Nothing to do with me, does it?" 

"I didn't mean it," Eames starts. His expression is perfectly apologetic. 

"It'd be easier if you just told me," Arthur argues reasonably. "It's not as if I didn't see the dream for myself. One more person won't make much difference, will it?"

"Arthur." 

The way Eames says his name is like he thinks it will make Arthur back off. It's cute — really. The fact of the matter is that Arthur only wants to push harder the more deeply Eames digs in his heels. It only seems fair to tell him so.

"I'm not going to leave until I'm sure you're well," Arthur says.

Eames' mouth purses thoughtfully. "Your government won't approve. Shouldn't you be reporting about Russia?"

"I'll fax it to them." Or he'll email it. Whatever way he needs to if that's Eames' only concern. "I'll put in for vacation time, too."

"If they don't give it to you?"

Arthur clenches his teeth and doesn't tell Eames that he'll be considered AWOL or that he'd probably be tried for treason upon returning to the States. "I won't leave, Eames."

Eames' shoulders go slack at Arthur's words. It's as if the tense cords running through them have been suddenly cut. Arthur wants to reach out and squeeze those shoulders — to reassure Eames of his support if nothing else — but he's afraid of another rejection. He knows that Eames is the type to make his own way; it's one of their many similarities, but here and now, when Arthur knows that he might be able to help, he wishes it weren't the case.

Shivering with sudden awareness of the temperature, Arthur turns his hand over on the table. It's just an open palm — empty but welcoming. It takes a long moment, during which Eames seems to consider the offer that Arthur's implying. Then, finally, he covers Arthur's hand with his. It's just a quick squeeze of his fingers before he slides away, but Eames is gathering up his spread of trinkets into his box — except for the poker chip, which goes into his pocket — and putting Arthur's teacup on the tray. It's Eames saying, "Let's go inside and talk," as he ushers Arthur onto his feet.

It's a start.

  


When they gather downstairs, M and James are gone. Arthur is a little grateful because he isn't sure how he would deal with an audience for the story Eames dishes out. He had expected that Eames' descriptions would include a little fighting and the confusion that came with facing a forgery of his commanding officer. That's not the problem, it's everything else.

Eames hands him little details Arthur couldn't have guessed. He talks about the the forge of Arthur from the first level and how it had been the miscalculated forgery that had been Eames' first clue that something was wrong. He starts to falter, though, when he talks about the second level.

"Looking at it logically, I knew it had to be a dream," Eames says. "I've never worn a uniform. But it felt — Bartlett was so close to how I remembered him and so what if I've never heard him say a certain thing? Maybe I misremembered. The human mind is so fickle. And then there was you. Or a projection of you and you were so —" He waves his hands and looks away from Arthur, lips drawn into a grimace. "The projection was very solid." 

Arthur looks at Eames while he searches for words to describe the projection — really looks at him. Eames, while having never been the type to dress fanatically well, has always been clean cut. Though he hadn't noticed it while they were outside, Arthur can see now how haggard he looks — like he hasn't bothered taking care of himself while he's been sorting through the last few days. While Eames falls silent, Arthur silently makes plans to make him shave tonight and maybe to give him a hair cut. It's not much, but it's a place to start. Maybe Eames will feel better knowing that there's someone handling the details of normal life; maybe knowing will let him focus.

Eames' voice is soft as he asks, "Arthur, what do you think?"

"You don't sound confused," is what Arthur says, and it's true. 

As far as he can tell, Eames has picked through all the possibilities of Russia and laid them out. When he looks at Eames, he doesn't see someone who is looking to be led by the hand to sanctuary. He has been and always will be someone Arthur recognizes as owning a great deal of intelligence, someone capable of incredibly quick thinking and even faster adaptation.

Eames is nodding, though, as he digs the poker chip out of his pocket. "I don't feel confused," he says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He bows his head and rubs the back of his neck, fingers sliding through hair that's getting too long now. "In fact, I'd say that's part of the problem. I should be confused. I shouldn't — I shouldn't have this thought in my head that screams for all of this to just stop."

"What do you mean?" Arthur asks. "Stop what?"

"I want to stop dreaming," intones Eames, rubbing a thumb over the poker chip in slow circles. Arthur balks at the very suggestion. The idea of Eames leaving the business for whatever reasons is laughable. "I can't think of why, really, except that the idea scares me."

The matter-of-fact quality in Eames' voice doesn't fit with his words. Arthur has to comment, "I've never known you to be scared of anything."

He's known Eames to be calculated — with a tendency toward thinking fast on his feet. There's a good dose of caution, too, but it's never been about fear so much as wanting to be sure he's heading in the right direction. That Eames fears dreaming of all things is strange.

When Eames looks at him helplessly, Arthur starts talking about the only thing that immediately comes to mind. "Have you ever heard of inception?" he asks.

Inception isn't something that's used practically. It's still something that's only talked about in a purely academic manner. It stems from the idea that, if ideas could be extracted from the mind, ideas could be put in the mind. It's proposed uses have been from the purely intellectual insertion of languages, maps, and skill sets, to something far more ephemeral in the desire to turn people away from their addictions. There's been the less innocuous talk of implanting memories, of course, but Arthur's never heard of anyone trying to use inception in the real world.

"I've heard of it," Eames answers and then tilts his head as he considers the possibility. "You're thinking that's what this is?"

"Well, you said yourself that you weren't confused, but you feel like you should be," Arthur points out. "You said that you're scared, but you can't tell me why or what of. You're an amazing dreamer, Eames. I can't think of anything that would make you turn away from that."

"It's not so easy as all that," Eames argues, and he slides his poker chip to his left hand. "I'm split. I love dreaming and I want to keep on dreaming, but the other side of me is so scared. It's not even that I'm having trouble with reality any more. I know where I am and I know how I got here and I'm fine. But it's like — it's like you walk in the room and all of that goes away." His eyes plead with Arthur for understanding. "I know you're real. It's not like I don't," Eames continues. "But whenever I see you, I see the projection and—

"I killed you, Arthur. Do you understand that? _I killed you_ and then you shot me and then I was waking up to you again and again. How am I supposed to dream again when I know you're dead?" Eames scrubs his hands through his hair and then finishes, fiercely while his hand clenches around the poker chip like it's a life line: "Why should I bother waking up when I can't trust myself to know if you're real?"

Eames curls into himself after he's spoken, and while he doesn't do anything but stay like that, breathing quiet and deep as he squeezes the back of his neck, he looks like he'd break apart at any moment. Arthur pushes himself from his seat and stands in front of Eames at a complete loss at what to say. He puts a hand on Eames' arm and rubs it in an attempt to be comforting. Arthur's more than a little grateful that Eames doesn't flinch from his touch this time; it makes it easier to go from touching his arm to touching his shoulder. He wonders if that would be all it takes. Eames has been careful to avoid touching him ever since Arthur had arrived, but he leans into it now for support.

Ever since Arthur slipped into Eames’ dream in Myanmar, chasing risk and taking a chance and finding a brilliant opportunity laid before him, he’s always thought he left Eames in the dust, left to scramble after him in the wake of glory. Upon closer inspection, however, he finds that as much as that’s true — as much as he’s got that shining victory to his name — Eames’ reputation continues untarnished, and instead of Eames coming after him, it’s Arthur who's desperate to keep track of where Eames is and what he's doing at all times. He calls it professional curiosity, says that it’s better to know what the best are up to than to be caught unawares, and lately, he's had more reason to be grateful for his own, obsessive interest. He’s glad for it — glad — now that he has Eames back under his observation, quite real, quite alive, and broken open in a way that Arthur has never been privy to.

It's because he prefers his Eames whole that he asks, hoping that there's an answer waiting to be plucked, "What do you need me to do?"

Eames opens up the wall of his arms and brings Arthur into a hug. It's only the one arm that wraps around Arthur's waist, while the other hugs up near Arthur's hip, flipping that poker chip over his fingers. Arthur ends up standing there sort of awkwardly for a second, before dropping to the living room floor.

"Hey," he says and covers Eames' fidgeting fingers with his own. "I don't know what to do, so you've got to tell me. How can I help you, Eames?"

“Prove to me this is real,” says Eames, looking miserable and uncertain. “Arthur—”

He moves before he can even register making the decision, cupping his hands around Eames' jaw. Arthur rubs his thumb over the tight muscle of his cheek, at the rough heat below his eye, at the salt gathered at the corners. Eames shudders, sags and leans into the curve of Arthur’s hand. His lashes brush over Arthur’s thumb; his nose slides over the heel of his palm; he breathes slow and deep at Arthur’s wrist, taking in his scent.

“Feels real enough, doesn’t it?” Arthur asks. His voice feels thick — too big for his own throat — and comes out quiet. "Don't I feel different from a projection?"

Eames nuzzles into his hand — lips over the pads of his knuckles, breath between his fingers, the barest hint of beard under Arthur’s little finger. It seems natural for Arthur to tilt his hand to cup Eames’ chin, to press his thumb under his lower lip, to rest at the corner, to watch intently, helplessly as Eames looks at him—

—to lean in and kiss him, swift and chaste.

Arthur pulls away almost as soon as their lips meet — stunned at his own behavior, at risking this at the height of Eames’ vulnerability — but a needy little sound slips out from Eames, who has his head turned to accommodate the kiss. He doesn’t chase after Arthur, though the poker chip slips to the floor from his trembling fingers. Eames’ tongue sneaks out — tracing his lips. It isn’t meant to be seductive, but it’s hard not to respond to it; Eames is focused on memorizing the feel of him, the taste of him, and it tugs at Arthur’s desire to be known.

Eames looks at him with the same focus that he remembers from London and Arthur feels like he’s being taken apart from the inside out. Then Eames laughs and echoes Arthur's previous words as he reaches for him. “Real enough,” he says, amazed and mocking and with a level of disbelief Arthur’s never heard from him.

Eames’ face, when Arthur sees it before it’s tucked into the line of his throat, is drawn in lines of fear, brittle and close to breaking, and Arthur strokes his hand over Eames’ neck, over his shoulder and up to his ear. He makes Eames look at him, turns that frightened face toward him.

Eames doesn’t do reckless — at least, not without purpose. Every leap that looks spontaneous is actually well thought out and planned for in advance. So when Eames kisses him — lips shaking, chaste still, and somehow feeling even more intimate for the weakness it implies — Arthur knows that he means it. When his arms tighten around Arthur’s ribs to bring them close, it is because Eames has found meaning — either solution or salvation — and Arthur, as cautious and wary as he usually is, trusts the intention easily.

His touch is firm — neither gentle nor harsh but very much there, mapping out the topography of his body with every slide of his palms over Arthur’s back, under his shirt and over his shoulder blades. Arthur pulls his shirt off and Eames’ fingers press over his vertebrae and into the muscle of his arms. Eames’ eyes are closed — feeling over Arthur’s body blindly — and Arthur wonders if he’ll see a forge of himself one day, if Eames could reproduce him by touch alone. His fingertips dip into the hollow of Arthur’s elbow as he makes his way down his arms; then their fingers are laced, the back of Arthur’s hand against Eames' palm.

“You were cold,” Eames murmurs then frowns, like he got something wrong. “When the forge of you put me under, his hands were cold.” He kisses Arthur’s fingers and continues by saying: “Everything about him was ice.”

Arthur loops his free hand behind Eames’ neck. If he could, Arthur would wipe away every memory of Russia from Eames’ mind because of the hesitancy he feels in the other man’s body. The Eames he knows has never held back from inserting himself into Arthur’s personal space. To see it now rips at him.

“Come here,” he tells Eames and this time, kisses him hotly, with an open mouth and a warm tongue. There’s nothing chaste — nothing cold — about this kiss at all.

He feels under his mouth that hesitation — the stuttering movement of Eames’ lips alongside the tightening of his fingers around Arthur’s. He pushes harder than maybe he should because of it, but Eames surrenders under the assault as a result, coming to life with movement when before he’d been too still, too observant to be responsive. He surges to meet Arthur halfway, groaning in relief, and his body rolls into every touch like it’s all he can do to solidify the truth of this moment.

“If my mind is going to second guess itself,” Eames says after Arthur has folded them toward the ground, while he’s pressing kisses to Eames’ chest between the buttons of his shirt. He trails off, but Arthur can read what he meant to say in the way he forces Arthur’s touch to be harder, for his kisses to be that much more cutting.

Let my body remember the feel of reality.

If Arthur’s hands seem reluctant to bruise, it’s only because he isn’t the type to hit people when they’re down. If Arthur doesn’t leave marks with his mouth, it’s because he’s been trained out of leaving behind proof of his activities, especially ones as lascivious as this. It certainly has nothing to do with the way it makes Eames noiselessly present his yearning for Arthur to see. It definitely has nothing to do with his own desire to make this moment into something real without having to resort to putting evidence on Eames’ body. He hopes that the heat is enough, that the touch is enough, that Eames won’t rise in the morning looking for the yellow-green tint at his hips and be disappointed or worse — even more certain than before that he’s slipping down the most treacherous slide a dreamer could have built.

  


A week passes before Arthur starts feeling like it might be okay for him to consider returning to the States. He's a little reluctant to leave, though it has very little to do with the slew of emails sitting in his inbox. Most are from his commanding officers or from their commanding officers, and they all tell him that he's required to attend this meeting, or that, to discuss his behavior. Returning now would mean a trial, probably a conviction and jail time if they think his going AWOL is more punishable than their need for his skill set. He doesn't mind going to jail, honestly, though he doesn't think it's going to happen. Even if it did, he reasons, it would have been worth it to know that Eames is doing better.

Eames has only just latched onto the idea of a totem, having recalled the spinning top that Mallorie had created in London. They've spent their time attached at the hip, touching frequently for reassurance and comfort, and gradually it's become something they do out of desire rather than requirement. He seems to have made his decision about reality, about Arthur, and frankly, Arthur isn't entirely sure if anything he's done has helped him toward that. It doesn't matter how they got here in the end. Arthur's just glad that those uncertain looks of Eames' — the ones that linger over Arthur, picking for details that separate him from the projection from Russia — have become less frequent.

No, his reluctance has nothing to do with Eames — at least, not because Arthur's afraid for him. His reason for not wanting to leave is much more visceral. It is because of Eames or, more correctly, what it's been like with him. It's been fascinating, really, experiencing his thought process in a way that London had not been able to afford. 

England had been about posturing as much as it had been about learning. There, Eames had kept most of his thoughts to himself, and then they'd been cut short besides. Here, especially due to the circumstances they were dealing with, Eames hadn't held back. He'd let words flow from him like water and thoughts burst from him, like he just had so much in him and so many ways in which he'd poured over his experience in Russia that he couldn't keep them all straight. 

Arthur likes that sort of thing. He likes being the guy who people bounce their thoughts off of until the ideas became something more solid. He's a Point Man. It's his thing. While he felt a little helpless dealing with something so new, so theoretical, the drive to find a solution meant that he always had Eames talking to him and that every moment meant that Eames was revealing more about himself. 

The longer that Arthur thinks about leaving, the more it means leaving behind a method of problem solving that is intimate and instinctive. It sucks, but Eames gets closer every day to finishing his totem and settling into himself. Arthur is becoming useless. Despite the trust with which Eames — and by extension, M and James — hold him, he's still a guest here. 

He really should leave.

Arthur finds Eames in the garage, cutting a circle out of a slim piece of metal. Eames is focused on his task, but his body barely does anything but twitch a little when Arthur rests a hand along the slope of his back. Arthur waits while Eames compares the metal circle to the size of his poker chip before speaking.

"I need to go home."

Eames turns around in his seat and sets aside his soon-to-be completed totem. When he stands, he's almost chest-to-chest with Arthur and practically of height. Eames takes Arthur's hands in his and rubs his thumbs over the knuckles.

With a soft smile, he leans in to press their foreheads together and says, "I think I saw this coming." He kisses Arthur's forehead and lingers there. "Your government won't be too happy, I suspect."

"No," Arthur agrees. "They'll probably try to make my life miserable for a while. They don't take too kindly to deserters."

Laughing, Eames laces their fingers together. "I'll be glad that you stayed with me as long as you did," he says. "Are you leaving now?"

Arthur nods and glances toward the door. "A taxi should be arriving any minute."

Eames takes advantage of Arthur's distraction to gather him up in his arms. It's a little awkward with Eames' arms wrapped around his ribs and him being forced onto his toes to hug Eames around his shoulders, but it feels good to be enveloped by warmth and to feel Eames' broad hands stroking over the length of his back. It's not Arthur's fault at all that he buries his nose into the crook of Eames' neck to breathe him in. He just wants the memories of this moment for the future.

Eventually, Eames lets Arthur find his feet again. He kisses Arthur's cheek affectionately, and a warm shiver spikes over Arthur's spine. "I'll see you around," Eames says, thumbing at Arthur's jaw, "Mr. Wright."

There are a lot of things that Arthur wants to say in the quiet that lies between them, but it doesn't seem right just yet. He takes a step backward and then another, watching Eames' gaze follow him as he leaves. It's not a goodbye, Arthur tells himself when he finds himself in the taxi to the airport. 

It's a promise for later.

  


[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594853) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594824) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594853)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595185)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595230) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595185)


	5. Serial 4

**LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2009)**

Arthur spends the next couple months turning a mostly-reasonable group of dreamers into a real team with which he can work. It takes a few tries and a few arguments, but Winters grudgingly gives pointers to Scarbrough on his Forging. Meanwhile, Arthur does practice runs with Rhodey, trying to get the other Point Man's skill up high enough that he won't be ripped apart by Arthur's projections in under a minute. Mallorie builds courses to challenge them and O'Neill ends up lumped in with the Forgers to practice his extractions on them.

After a few more dream runs, Arthur has them looking through files on volunteers that have been provided for teams to practice on — people of various mental skills, usually other dreamers, that have been given a fake secret to keep. Together, they decide on a man who’s been given a high-difficulty rating, arrange for a meeting at the end of the week, and set about planning an appropriate dream.

It’s both easier and harder having things arranged like this. On the one hand, Arthur doesn’t have to figure out how they’re going to corner their Mark, who is a Commander from the base at which they're stationed. Here, the Mark will waltz through the door, pleasant as anything, before doing his best to keep from blurting out everything he knows. On the other hand, this is a team he isn’t certain about working with and Winters is determined to make the job more and more intricate.

O'Neill has brought up the idea of using someone who's in a position of authority over their Mark, Commander Bartlett, and using that authority to put him at ease about speaking about his secrets. It's a simple idea and thus, not one that Arthur would have presented himself. It's one that he can support, however, and elaborate on until it becomes something truly worthwhile.

The problem comes when Scarbrough brings up M. "She's in charge of basically everyone," he says. "If there's anyone that everyone defers to, it's the Lady Upstairs. It'd be easy to get one of us to forge her."

Winters frowns at the thumb that Scarbrough waggles between the two of them as he speaks and brushes his hands over the top of his thighs. The table next to him has Commander Bartlett's file on it — open and with several pages turned. Winters taps at a the paragraph laying out Bartlett's history: "Bartlett works closely with M. He's in charge of new dreamers when they're recruited into the Program."

Brows rising, O'Neill takes a step forward. "Yeah, _and_...?"

" _And_ ," Winters finishes pointedly, standing to meet the Extractor's challenge, "that means he's on with her pretty well. I don't know about Scarbrough, but I don't fancy trying to pull off a Forgery of a woman whose socio-normative behavior with Bartlett is largely supposition."

"We don't need it to be perfect," Arthur cuts in, trying to salvage O'Neill's thinking for him.

"Forgeries are never _perfect_ , Mr. Wright." Winters' attention slices toward him immediately. "But we have neither the time nor the authority to investigate any deeper than the file they've given us. The point I was trying to make is that we can't have Bartlett see M, expect her to greet him a certain way and get something different."

Mallorie’s hand moves more slowly as she sketches out designs for the dream — listening, clearly, as Winters digs in his heels about anyone forging M and Arthur lays out in precise detail all the reasons why it would be the simplest way to get Commander Bartlett’s subconscious to trust O’Neill with his secret. Arthur has Rhodey on his side easily enough since Point Men by nature like clean and clear cut plans, but Winters doesn’t pay attention to his agreeing nods.

“Oh, stuff it,” Winters snaps when Rhodey is about to jump in with an argument. “Look, Wright. We chose Bartlett because he’s a challenge. He’s not going to fall for some simple ruse just because M’s the reigning authority around here. They’ll be looking for that. He’ll know it’s coming.”

Arthur waves his hand through the air between them. “You’re underthinking it,” he informs Winters in no uncertain terms. “It’s because they think we won’t use something so simple that they won’t be prepared for it.”

“ _Mr. Wright_ ,” Winters sighs heavily. He takes a moment to press his hands together and look heavenward — praying for patience perhaps. “You can follow that line of thought forever, but the point of these exercises is to expand our minds — use a little imagination to do something no one has ever done before.”

“Imagination,” Arthur echoes, deadpan.

“Why don’t we try this instead—” Winters starts and then lays out a plan that involves mimicking the layout of their workroom and mock waking up from a failed extraction. "And then we just ask," he finishes. "No forging necessary — M or otherwise."

"Well then what's the point?" cuts in Scarbrough. "Wouldn't that just put our skills to waste?"

"Now would be a great time to start thinking on your feet, Scarbrough," Winters snaps back. "What use are Forgers if all we can do is wear other people's faces?" His attention swivels back to Arthur quickly enough. "Brilliant, isn't it? This is a very difficult volunteer to extract from after all. Everyone will expect us to fail."

Arthur crosses his arms. "He won't remember dreaming anything. That'll be a problem."

"But he won't think he is dreaming," argues Winters, "which is the point. He'll remember exactly how he got into this room, even if he doesn't remember the dreaming. And Mallorie—" He gives the slim, French Architect a flattering smile, "—she can make things seem so real."

Shaking his head, Arthur says, "This is sounding worse by the second, Winters. I can't be the only one that's heard about how bad an idea it is to build from reality. I don't want any of us waking up after the extraction wondering if we're actually awake."

"I can put in something different," Mallorie pipes up. "Something that when you see it, you'll know that it's the dream. Something impossible in the real world." Arthur raises a brow at her. "Like a top," she says. "Like a top that never stops spinning."

Winters makes these grand sort of gestures that Arthur thinks means, _thank you, someone on my side at last, satisfied yet, Mr. Wright?_ He follows it up with both his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. Arthur still doesn't like it, though, and it must show on his face because Winters takes a step toward him.

"Do you see any other problems we might face?" he asks.

O'Neill leans in. "How are we going to get him out?"

"I really don't think shooting him would be an issue," Arthur replies — because if everyone is on board with it, he might as well be too.

It's not that the plan has any problems to it because it actually seems relatively solid. It's essential, after all, to find a way to surprise someone of their target's difficulty level and all the more so when their target's coming in prepared to face an extraction. The problem is that he doesn't like it when dreams seem too real, doesn't like it when he sees things that are familiar when he could be walking through impossible Architecture. The problem is that Mallorie is really very good at building dreams, but Arthur isn't about to trust her with everything.

"We'll need some really tight mazework for everything outside the workshop," he says, "since we'll all be in here with the Mark."

"I'm on it," Mallorie replies promptly, reaching for her sketch pads.

"Good," Arthur says, nodding to her and then turning to look at Scarbrough and Winters. "Now which one of you wants to forge Mal?"

  


When Commander Bartlett walks into their workshop, he isn't really what Arthur expects. He's older, for one thing, than his rank and his file photo had really suggested. He's ragged around the eyes and graying at the temples. As short as he is, too, he strides into the workshop with all the certainty of a military man quite secure in his position. Bartlett starts off with an impassive, neutral expression — just short of a frown — but puts on a small, charming smile as he greets the team with a handshake. Only Scarbrough is missing, but Bartlett doesn't mention or seem to notice it.

"Pleased to meet you," he says to Arthur and then his smile broadens just a touch as he turns to Winters. "And you too, Mister...?

"Code name is Winters these days, sir." He takes Bartlett's hand warmly. "Nice to see you again."

Bartlett thumbs his nose. "Don't expect me to go easy on you. My subconscious is no slouch."

Winters laughs with a smile that's broad, wrinkling the corners of his eyes and the bridge of his nose, and Arthur is abruptly distracted by how it brightens his face. "I wouldn't expect anything less, sir."

The short exchange makes everyone cast furtive glances at one another. Up until this point, Winters hadn't said anything about knowing their Mark personally, though now that Arthur thinks on the possibility more seriously, the connection is obvious. Winters had said that Commander Bartlett was in charge of new dreamers. It only makes sense that the two had at least crossed paths.

The extraction gets set up without further elaboration on the dialogue between Winters and Bartlett, though it makes Arthur uneasy as Mallorie puts Bartlett under with a sedative and then helps with the IVs as Scarbrough comes in. He hopes that the history between the two doesn't turn Winters into an unexpected and unplanned for weak link. Arthur doesn't like it when Plan A goes bad and making up new plans of actions on the fly, while not impossible or even improbable, aren't exactly what he wants for a test like this.

"Don't worry," Mallorie says, smiling in that way of hers that is slightly sharp. Her hand is above the PASIV device, ready to start the Somnacin. "Sleep well, gentlemen."

Even knowing what they're doing and what their plan is, it's disorienting to feel that free fall, the sucking vacuum of sedation that pulls him down, and still wake up to what is essentially the same ceiling, the same walls, the same everything. Arthur immediately searches out the sign Mallorie had arranged and it's there: on the narrow desk that she'd claimed in reality, tucked carefully between the laptop and the cup of pens, the top silently spins and spins and spins.

Looking around, everyone is stirring in their seats. Scarbrough swings around to the PASIV wearing Mallorie's face. Arthur can tell in that one stretch of movement that Scarbrough's vastly improved since the start of this project. He's got the subtle swing of her hips down and his hair curls into his neck the way hers does.

When he gathers up the IVs from the dreamers, he comments in Mallorie's casual voice: "That was fast. I didn't expect any of you up for at least three more minutes. Did something go wrong?"

"Kicked," grunts Rhodey, radiating disappointment. "Projections were on us from the moment we went in."

The words are lie but the feeling, Arthur knows, isn't. As much as he seemed to agree with Winters' plan for extraction, the fact of the matter is that Rhodey has to be disappointed with the lack of fighting involved. Here, both Rhodey and Arthur are back-up — the only two dreamers that are truly meant to react if Winters' plan goes south.

"It was amazing!" cries O'Neill, cranking up his boyish charm to eleven. He's the youngest out of all of them and looks it too. If Arthur didn't have access to his file, he'd seriously question whether O'Neill was over eighteen, as slight and small as he looks. "I've never seen a mind work like that. Except for Mr. Wright's, of course. He took us apart nearly as fast as you, sir!"

Bartlett has a moment of disorientation. "I'm… Are you sure?"

Winters steps in silkily. "It was very impressive, sir," he says, smiling even as he lets his shoulders sag. Arthur imagines that the squeeze he gives Bartlett's shoulder is a bit limp under the weight of failure. "Your mind must have been prepared for us."

"Well, yes," Bartlett says. Some of his confusion melts away as he accepts Winters' explanation. "All of the volunteers were. We're supposed to give you all a hard time. It's a teaching exercise. It's not meant to be easy."

"Naturally," agrees O'Neill brightly. He dims a little, folding his arms in front of him on the arm rest as he leans toward Bartlett. "It's too bad, though. I'm pretty sure everyone was expecting great things from us."

Bartlett nods slowly. "You are a collection of very impressive dreamers," he tells O'Neill. "But you can't have expected to win every round."

"No. Of course." O'Neill's eyes drop to the ground while his mouth twists this way and that with youthful malcontent. "It's just that Mr. Wright's been working so hard with us these last few weeks. I mean, sure he's not an Extractor, but he's a real challenge to get information on. And then, Winters did a lot of work with Mal on the Architecture..." He trails off, glancing up at Bartlett and then over to the rest of the team.

Scarbrough leans down to pat O'Neill's hand. It's not something that Mallorie ever did in reality, but it conveys the solidarity they want Bartlett to believe whenever he says, in her quietly lilting French tone: "I think what he's trying to say is that we've come a long way already. We're much more of a team now than any of us expected to be."

Winters sighs. "So what now? Since we've failed, we can't go on to the next stage in the lesson plan, can we?"

Bartlett is slow to look at Winters. His attention is grabbed by O'Neill, who appears to have sunken down into a pit of teenage misery. "You'll get another chance," he explains, "after we've reviewed your performance. With a volunteer Mark at a lower level, though."

"That's good," Arthur jumps in. "Not all hope is lost." He nudges Rhodey. "Next time, maybe you'll get a proper shot at those projections."

Rhodey nods. "It'll be nice to get at least a couple shots in before they get me." His smile is a little thin.

"That's it then, hm?" Winters asks, raising his brows at Bartlett. "I guess we can let you get on your merry way, Commander. It was a good chase while it lasted."

"Right," Bartlett says, pushing himself to his feet and nodding to Scarbrough.

Everyone waits for a moment, watching as Bartlett gathers his coat and starts to the door. Arthur looks to O'Neill, who pipes up immediately: "Sir!"

Bartlett turns, but it's with a soft smile on his face, as if he'd expected to get called. O'Neill scurries to his side, fingers twisting at his sides.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, seeing as it won't make any difference now," O'Neill says. "What were we supposed to figure out?"

Bartlett stands straighter and Arthur suddenly worries that they're going to have projections banging at the walls any second now. Already his mind is backtracking over the different mistakes they could have made — O'Neill's wording was forced, perhaps, or Scarbrough's Forgery too faulty; had Winters not revealed enough or was his being here at all enough to put Bartlett on alert? Rhodey is tense at Arthur's elbow; he'd come up with some concerns of his own already.

Glancing at his watch, Bartlett grudgingly concedes that, "I have a little time."

The small bubble of excitement that rises through O'Neill is plainly visible in his expression. It's cute — really — and Arthur wonders whether he ever considered doing Forgery, if he'd attempted it and failed to gather that loose sense of identity. It's no matter now, he supposes. O'Neill's found his niche being an Extractor.

Bartlett folds his coat over one hand and then laces his fingers together below his belly. "The fact of the matter is," he starts, "there is no secret. This stage is for the evaluation of your skills as a team."

A ripple of shock goes through them all. It's not an answer any of them expected, so Arthur steps forward.

"So we really didn't pass then," he says, clinging to the story that Winters had developed for them to work by. "We didn't even get a chance to see you in the dream."

With a thoughtful little hum, Bartlett lifts his chin. "That's so," he agrees. "In any case, I have most of the information I need to do a proper evaluation. But I would like to see one more thing before I go." Arthur raises his brows, questioning, as Bartlett reaches back for the doorknob to the exit. "Mr. Wright? Rhodey? How are your trigger fingers?"

  


"You knew?" is the first indignant thing out of Winters' mouth when they rise from their dream after the timer runs out. He doesn't sound very pleased with having been outsmarted, especially by a former mentor.

Bartlett laughs as he hands over his cannula to Mallorie, who isn't being played by Scarbrough anymore because there's no spinning top on her desk. "Yes," he tells Winters. "Not that it wasn't a beautifully laid out design by your Architect. And the plan for the extraction was sound — getting me to trust and sympathize with this young man—" He patted O'Neill's arm, "—before having him ask me."

"Then how would you know?" Arthur asks in a voice louder than he intends because he's still running high off the adrenaline rush of fighting Bartlett's projections. "If the dream felt real enough and the extraction was good, what was wrong?"

"You were missing a player," Bartlett explains. "You're working in a very structured environment, Mr. Wright. Every team has six members. I only met five. It was a clever ruse — one that would have worked in the real world — but not here, I'm afraid." He pauses for a moment to let it all sink in. "Did you have a back up plan?"

"Not especially," Winters grouses. "But O'Neill did want to use a forge of M. Would that have worked?"

The look that Bartlett gives Winters is considering, completely knowledgeable about Winters' abilities. "It would depend on the quality of the Forgery, I should think," he says, "but risky. One never wants to get on a lady's bad side, wouldn't you agree?"

Mal's smile has teeth in it. "Truer words were never spoken, Commander."

"Right," Bartlett says, rising from where he'd been dreaming. He shakes Arthur's hand and then Winters' in turn. "You'll have my report in the morning, Mr. Wright. Always interesting seeing you, Winters."

"Likewise, sir," replies Winters. "We should do this again sometime."

"I should think not," Bartlett says as he makes his departure, giving the workshop a lingering examination. "I have enough trouble with _deja vu_ as it is."

  


Without the goal of an extraction and any constructive criticism having to wait until morning, the members of their team go their separate ways. Arthur sticks around, unsure of what to do with himself, and is surprised to see Winters do the same. At first, Arthur thinks Winters is daydreaming. While not something unusual for the type of people that make it into their field, usually daydreaming is exchanged for the real thing sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, Winters is lounging quietly in a chair, chin braced on on his elbow, scratching idly at his cheek as he looks at the drawings Mallorie had pinned to the drawing board.

To Arthur, Winters' gaze seems to be far off and his mind much further than even that, so when he comes closer, he doesn't expect to be noticed or for Winters to turn slightly at his approach and say, "I guess we should both be getting home. No rest for the wicked, hm?"

His voice sounds weary — unreasonably so, Arthur thinks, considering Bartlett had left sounding more positive about the attempted extraction than not. It would be outside his nature to be comforting, but he can afford to be sympathetic — at least, subtly.

"I'm not really all that tired," Arthur says, glancing the little kitchenette that Rhodey had set up in the corner complete with coffee maker and piles of snacks. "I could make us some coffee."

So Arthur makes coffee and they sit across from near one another, framing one corner of the table that has the PASIV and Bartlett's file on the other end. Winters folds one hand around the mug, taking in the heat without speaking. His hair has grown this last month and a half of training. It hangs in his eyes and sticks out over his ears. The harshly buzzed line that it had been in when Arthur had first arrived in London is now softened with growth. It makes Arthur think of time and how little he's noticed its passage.

It occurs to him that... "We haven't really had a moment to ourselves, have we?" he says. Winters' eyes flick over to him. Arthur's pointedly not turned to look at him. His eyes are on the PASIV, but its like he can feel the slip of breath between Winters' lips.

"We've been pretty busy," admits Winters, "though I haven't noticed time as usual."

Arthur grins. "Time flies when you're having fun?" he ventures.

Winters makes a small noise as he takes a drink from his mug. "Something like that. You, for instance. You’ve lived up to your reputation more than I'd bargained for, Mr. Wright. I'm impressed."

Arthur pretends to be insulted — of course, he was excellent — but a part of him is glad to have been noticed and not found wanting. It's one thing to be respected by those who couldn't do better, but Winters is an unrivaled Forger. A peer in every sense but their individual venues.

"I wish I could say the same," Arthur replies and when Winters' expression goes kind of incredulous, he quickly hurries to say, "Reviews were very mixed when I asked. It's like they were never talking about the same person."

"Professional hazard," explains Winters. "Though honestly, I'm surprised you got any information at all."

"You seemed to have plenty on me." The words are out of Arthur's mouth before he really has a chance to think about them. The way Winters goes still is telling. He hadn't thought he would get called on his behavior, and now that Arthur realizes this, he can't help but ask, "Why did you start doing what you did? The gifts, I mean."

Winters' reply doesn't come quickly. He takes the time to build up his explanation and Arthur watches as his jaw works around the words, as his eyes take in the details of Arthur's face contemplatively. His tongue licks over the front of his teeth, as if he finds it distasteful to have the answer pulled out of him.

He says in a tone that is bland and dismissive: "Because I could."

Arthur leans forward on his crossed arms. Winters is the one person in all the world that has bothered to — and succeeded in — finding a great deal of his secrets. Knowing the kinds of roundabout paths Winters must have taken to find that information, Arthur can't imagine that he had done it only to prove his own extraordinary ability.

"That can't be all," Arthur tells Winters. He thinks about how the gifts had started out so general but had ultimately become more finely tuned to Arthur's tastes. "I think you wanted me to know that you knew where I was. Not only that, but also that you knew me or were learning me. Isn't that what Forgers do?"

"Mr. Wright," scolds Winters. It's all the protest that he puts forward, though. Arthur watches him carefully as he takes a drink from his mug. His expression is somewhat pained but otherwise inscrutable.

"You don't have to answer," Arthur offers. After all, it's possible that Winters might not want to talk about his reasons for doing things, even if he's more than happy to tell people _how._

His words bring Winters' gaze back to him. As always, the gaze is assessing — a bit scrutinizing and altogether interested — but there's no way for Arthur to tell what Winters finds, if he finds Arthur wanting in some way, or if he sees something he hadn't expected. The longer the look lasts, the more uncomfortable Arthur becomes, hyper-aware of the heat crawling around his shoulders.

"It's because of rules," says Winters, setting aside his coffee and leaning toward Arthur with his chin resting on his fist. Arthur casts him a quizzical look, not catching on at once. "Rules are such a large part of our programs. It's black and white, right and wrong, possible and impossible, but in Myanmar—" Winters splays his hands in a helpless gesture. "In Myanmar, you broke them. It was interesting."

"Interesting," Arthur echoes. He's pushing for more. The want to do so comes unexpectedly. "And your help in Germany — am I supposed to think of that as a gift? Or was that you breaking the rules?"

Winters shrugs and then leans back, scratching at the side of his face. "Is this why you stuck around?" He gestures to the workshop around them. "Are you trying to interrogate me?"

"I'm just curious as to why you would have bothered," Arthur tells him. "The Architect was selling drugs and equipment on the black market and though — yes — it was while we were in Germany, it's not exactly your government's jurisdiction. I would have figured it out eventually." That pulls a funny look onto Winters' face — something skeptical and kind of amused. " _I would have_ ," Arthur assures him. "You could have left us alone, but you acted instead."

"While it would have said much of your character, I'm sure," Winters jumps in with words that huff out of him. "The fact is that while it might not be necessarily within England's natural territories, Germany is a sight closer than most. Neither of our leaders would be too keen on illegal dreamers getting their hands on the latest and best, right?"

"Of course," Arthur answers and is surprised at his own disappointment.

He had hoped to hear something more, he thinks — something that would point him in the right direction. He half wonders if he's been imagining the feeling that's been sustaining his curiosity. Wasn't it just a couple months ago that he'd shoved his way off a plane, desperate to see if Winters was there to greet him?

"Plus," adds Winters, "it was as good an excuse as any to break into your hotel room." He grins at the way Arthur tilts slightly widened eyes in his direction and there it is — that shark-like smile that dares Arthur to make awful decisions. "I had no idea you'd kept so many of my cards, Mr. Wright."

Laughing, Arthur stands from the table and says, "And on that note, I think I'll call it a night."

Without quite knowing why, Arthur is all nerves as he takes his coffee mug to the sink to rinse it out. He's only certain at the mention of his keeping Winters' messages that he doesn't want the other man to realize just how many he actually has still, that the batch he brought with him to Germany was merely a portion of his full collection. It's not an entirely embarrassing part of his life, however; the messages are a good way of keeping track of Winters, who seems unable to stop himself from leaving them everywhere.

"Yes. I should do the same."

The way Winters says it makes Arthur turn away from his cup to look over his shoulder at him. Winters rubs the backs of his fingers against his stubble before swiping at his lower lip. His expression is undecipherable for the few seconds that it takes Arthur to drag his gaze up to Winters' eyes. Even then, the look in Winters' eyes makes Arthur's palms sweat.

Intending to say goodnight, Arthur sets aside his cup to dry overnight and turns completely toward Winters to lean back against the counter. It occurs to him that they've been trying to figure each other out all evening — each of them with their own skills. Arthur's been relying on words, is all, while Winters could do the same by just watching. He doesn't know if Winters got any more out of him and his body language than he had out of Winters, but there's at least one thing that he doesn't think will be turned down.

"You know," he begins, giddy almost at the the words he knows are about to spill out from him. "It seems strange to talk to someone whose name I don't know."

Winters stands up as Arthur starts to speak and gathers his mostly-full mug up to be taken to the sink like Arthur's. "I suppose it must," he replies with a hint of a amusement leaking through. "You mean to say you didn't find my name anywhere for all your research?"

The teasing surprise in Winters' voice betrays the idea that Arthur was never expected to find anything other than a code name. Arthur wonders if he was so lucky — if somehow Winters truly managed to find out everything about him while Arthur sifted through for the slightest scrap of information. It doesn't matter now what either of them have found, he guesses — not when they're rubbing shoulders by the sink while Winters washes his cup and not when they've spent months learning how the other's mind works.

"Don't kid," Arthur says, brushing aside the other man's change of topic. He moves until he and Winters are standing in front of each other. It feels important to do this right, after all. He sticks out his hand and breathes, and breathes and — "I'm Arthur."

That makes Winters' attention snap toward him at once. He hesitates, looking at Arthur's hand with no small amount of caution. When he does take Arthur's hand, finally, Winters' palm is still moist from the water, but the effect softens his calluses into something pleasant. Arthur fits the crook of their thumbs together, and without thinking, slides his index finger over Winters' wrist.

Winters smiles almost shyly. "Eames," he says, giving Arthur's hand a firm squeeze. "Pleasure to meet you."

"Eames," repeats Arthur. He chuckles softly, letting his hand linger in the handshake. "I would never have guessed that."

Eames — his name is Eames — his smile is even broader than it had been all evening. "It was sort of the point when I chose it." For a second, Arthur feels like he's slipping. Like he's made some mistake letting his real name go loose when all he has is a code name again. Eames must sense that because he says, "My mum let me — when I was old enough to make those kinds of decisions."

Just like that, Arthur's on sure footing again and he breathes, breathes, _breathes_ this moment. "It suits you," he tells Eames and thinks about how — when this is all over, when he's back home with what's left of that bottle of rum and Le Petit Prince and stacks of paperwork — he'll take a sharpie to his box of white note cards and write Eames' name across the front of it.

It takes a couple seconds — but just a couple — for either of them to realize that they're just standing there holding hands, not even bothering with the handshake anymore. Arthur does the final squeeze, and Eames cups his hand around Arthur's fingers as they slide apart. Feeling awkward but also warm, Arthur tucks both hands into his back pockets to keep the feeling of having them enclosed for a little while longer.

Arthur casts about for a change of topic. He tilts his head toward the coffee maker. "We should—"

"Right. Coffee," Eames cuts in immediately, downing the remaining contents in several gulps. He licks his lips afterward. "I'll handle it. No worries. If you want, you can—"

"Yeah, I should go to—" _bed_ , Arthur means to finish as he turns toward he exit of their workshop while Eames is fumbling with the coffee grinds behind him. He twists around, caught by a sudden thought. "Eames," he calls.

Eames looks up immediately, caught awkwardly with his hand in the coffee maker and his foot hooked behind the trash to pull it from under the cabinetry.

"We should do this again sometime," Arthur says and then ducks his head because this could mean anything and really why are words so stupid exactly when he needs them to work together the most? "I mean... I'm pretty sure that we'll make it to the real world reconnaissance in the next stage, and it's not like I'm not going to be here for another four months, but..." He fumbles with his words like an idiot and Eames is just watching him, intently but also with a kind of sympathy. "What I mean is after this," he finally says. "After this project is over, we should work together sometime. I think we'd be good."

"Arthur." Eames is smiling but kind of sadly. He dumps the coffee grinds and slides the trash back under the cabinets with his foot while he scrubs his palms over his thighs. "You do remember that we work for different countries, right?"

"Of course," Arthur snaps back softly. He had remembered. The thing is that he'd just forgotten why that should have made any difference. "I was just saying that sometime, when we're _not_ —"

"I'd love to," Eames interrupts.

He has no idea why his heart is hammering the way it is. "You don't have to if you—"

"Arthur," Eames cuts in and really, Arthur is stupidly grateful that he keeps doing that because speaking is apparently difficult tonight and this is one of the reasons why he never became an Extractor. "I'd love to work with you. Sometime. When we're not working opposite sides of the Atlantic."

"Good," he says, relieved to the promise inherent in Eames' words. It's not a _next time_ or even a _next month_ promise, but it's there — somewhere in the future. His hands fist in his back pockets and he glances back at the exit because he really should leave. "See you tomorrow then," he says.

Eames taps his fingers over the top of the cabinets in a nervous fidget. His voice, though, is calming and final before Arthur makes his escape: "Goodnight, Arthur."

  


The next few days find them using their code names in conversation more than necessary. It's done with a sly smile around the syllables, made complete by the knowledge that only they know the truth of the situation. Every _Mr. Wright_ and each _Winters_ is tinged with the soft edge of intimacy — malleable and warm. If the frequency makes the rest of the team curious, none of them mention it, but Arthur figures it's for the best. They're too swamped in the initial research for the second stage of the joint project — a mission in the real world, reconnaissance primarily on neutral territories that everyone can agree on.

Arthur can't deny that he likes the layers of their secrets and being able to think _Eames_ when he sees the other man's face. It makes him feel lighter when he hears Eames' voice wrapping around his code name, purring over _Mister_ and cutting sharp at the end of _Wright_. He can't stop thinking about how future meetings — meetings outside of dream sharing, outside of this building — could have them greeting each other honestly.

Increasingly, he feels as if he's entering into a routine, where every morning is comprised of the think tank and every afternoon is full of dreaming. Sometimes he works through lunch, but Rhodey or Mallorie (or lately, Eames) will get him something from the cafeteria. He usually stays late with paperwork, but today he's getting an early start.

Rhodey wants a set of files to be released and there's the request for a PASIV to be submitted. So, Arthur is on the administration floor when he sees M. She's heading down the hall in a suit of warm colors that's completely at odds with her crisp demeanor. He's only spoken with her on a handful of times during her rounds through the different teams and most recently when she dropped by a few days after their test with Commander Bartlett to congratulate them on a job well done. 

M has always been polite when speaking with him — pleasant and businesslike with a side of humor that implies that she has a greater insight into his character than he might like — but even after Arthur has updated her on the team's progress, she speaks privately and quietly with Eames. He doesn't know what it is — if she doubts his reliability or if it's because Eames is her agent first and foremost — but it's never kept her from speaking with him. Arthur supposes he should be glad that she chooses to speak with him at all.

From what he's heard, M is a strict leader and highly adaptable. She's had her fair share of unruly espionage agents — the most famous being, of course, those coded under the number 007 — but it's only made her more handy at reining in the agents that would sooner chew through a lead than heel. For all intents and purposes, Arthur's come to consider her as mostly kind, but alarmingly formidable when she needs to be.

When she catches sight of Arthur, she raises a hand to him absentmindedly as she leans toward her assistant, Moneypenny, who is murmuring very quickly as she hands over an electronic pad. A few more explanations are exchanged between them and eventually M takes the stylus to sign it. 

Only then does she call out: "Mr. Wright, if you have a moment."

He doesn't actually have a moment and is heading towards the workshop and in the opposite direction of her apparent course. Refusing her, however, is fairly impossible since it seems that Moneypenny has assumed that Arthur would take her place and has scooted back a couple paces to make room beside M. When Arthur falls into step with her, M doesn't immediately speak. She takes the time to greet a couple others as they pass, including Rhodey, who nods to Arthur before heading in the direction of the workshop.

M seems to be taking her time to get to the business she wants to start with Arthur. He hopes that Rhodey will at least tell the rest of the team why he'll be running late.

As they walk together, the number of people they encounter dwindles, and M tilts her head toward him. "How's the progress with your team?"

His brow creases despite his efforts to keep his expression neutral. "Not much further along than when we spoke a few days ago," he tells her honestly. "Mostly it's been the initial research into the new Mark until we have all the information we need for a good brainstorming session."

"It sounds like you've been keeping busy, then," she comments.

"It's been an incredible experience," he offers. He feels like she's fishing for something in particular, but he doesn't know what. "Winters alone has been enough to keep me on my toes."

She does smile at that; he supposes she must be pleased at the compliment to one of her best dreamers, but he can't be sure. He can't tell her that Eames has become more of an interest than the collaborative dreaming or that Eames makes him more willing to take risks he wouldn't otherwise. He can't tell her how much he wishes he had the same freedom as Eames with his work or how he's started to question his loyalty to his country when all he wants to do is cut loose with a PASIV and show everyone how it's done.

He can't. So, when she asks if working with the European dreamshare program has taught him anything, he merely answers, "Yes. A great deal more than expected."

"How fortuitous." M's voice is sharp. There's no other way to describe it, really. She's being cautious with her words and Arthur wonders if she's being so critical with his, if there's something he should worry about. "Of course, even without this opportunity, I'm sure a man of your skill will always be able to find work."

If there's anything that Arthur has learned in the couple months he's been here, it's that the British have the undeniable ability to say everything with nothing. It's in the tone of their voice — or the lack of inflection. It's in how they avoid particular topics and wish for the complete opposite of what they want. Eames does it all the time when he compliments the abilities of dreamers he thinks are shit and follows it up with advice for improvement. He tells Arthur that it softens the blow of criticism, but Arthur's always worked with the idea that people should just get a thicker skin if they couldn't handle it.

Whatever it is that M is trying to tell him, Arthur just wishes she would come out and say it.

He's certain that she sees the confused look that he gives her, but M carries on without pausing. "It's always interesting to see what happens to agents after they leave," she starts without specifying if she means collaborative efforts like the project they're doing now or if she means dream sharing altogether. "Sometimes they do well in the real world, but usually not. Too often, they fall into the wrong crowds. Working with government support makes people cocky and that attitude leads to mistakes, poor judgement, and fatalities."

They arrive at the elevators while M is still talking and she reaches to stab at the up button before straightening her jacket. "There's always the chance, however, that they were foolish enough not to know what they were getting into at the time. More's the pity," she continues as the elevator pings its arrival and gives Arthur an appraising look after she's stepped into its confines with Moneypenny. "They were all good agents, too. Much like yourself, Mr. Wright."

Arthur holds the elevator doors open with his hand. His mind is whirling through the many possible explanations for this conversation, but if he's honest with himself, he knows that he has too little information to go on. "M, what are you trying to say?"

That would be when a disturbance starts making itself known behind Arthur. When he turns to look, it's Eames — because of course it is — and Worth is hot on his heels. They're shouting at each other, which is a bit of a surprise, but then he hasn't seen Worth much at all except when they're checking out PASIVs together or at the periodic seminars on morale and team-building.

"You think it's just a coincidence?" Worth is growling. "I know you don't believe in those, Winters."

"Keep your theories and your suspicions to yourself," Eames hisses right back. "I don't want to hear them."

"You'll regret dismissing them when I turn out to be right," Worth cautions. They're close enough now that Worth actually notices that Arthur and M are nearby. The look Worth stabs in Arthur's direction is downright vicious, but he's fast to return his attention to Eames. "Winters, you should have joined my team when this started. Imagine the things you could have learned with me—"

Eames twists on his heel sharp enough that he almost shoves Worth back. "I've learned plenty where I am," he says through grit teeth. 

His retort doesn't surprise Arthur nearly so much as it shakes Worth. It's true that neither he nor Eames have really learned anything in terms of their ability to dream, but between them, there's a sort of freedom, a lack of restriction that makes them feel comfortable in doing anything. The fact is that there is nothing more they can learn from being in the militarized dreaming programs, but just being here has introduced them to a world of possibility.

Worth's perspective is too narrow, Arthur realizes. He's only focused on Eames' ability to forge. Arthur is surprised to find himself a bit angry for Eames' sake, as if Worth's unconscious snub of Eames' abilities is something Arthur should take personally. 

It's while Arthur is mulling over the Extractor's behavior that Worth's voice dips low. "I've seen your progress reports, Winters. Your skills are going to waste. You could forge whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, but Wright's got you play acting. You think I didn't notice that you didn't forge in your test dream? Instead, the forging gets passed onto Scarbrough. He's a shadow compared to you!"

"The plan was mine," starts Eames, but Worth railroads right over him.

"You're the best Forger I've ever met," he insists, pressing into Eames' space. "You can't tell me that whatever shoddy impersonation Scarbrough came up with would have ever stood a chance with you or that seeing it didn't make you think of all the ways you would have done it better."

M shoves past Arthur as she leaves the elevator. "What the hell is going on out here?" she demands. Worth and Eames stand there, almost at each other's throats, but say nothing. Frustrated, M gestures toward Eames first. "Well?" she urges.

Eames sniffs, clearly this side of furious but reining it in well, and steps back from Worth. "A misunderstanding, I'm sure," he says.

"Like hell it was," Worth snarls.

"Oh!" M cuts in, staring Worth down. "You speak when it's your turn, am I clear?" When Worth ducks his head with a lazy salute, M looks expectantly at Eames.

"I heard you were talking with Mr. Wright," Eames explains, nodding toward Arthur. "I ran into Worth on the way. He said some things I didn't agree with."

"And you?" M turns to Worth with brows raised and her mouth in a thin, displeased line. "What happened, then?"

Worth rubs under his nose, looking at Eames' profile with a frown. "Just stating my opinion was all."

Before M can clear anything up, though, Eames mutters out of the corner of his mouth. "Your opinion is shit."

"All I _said_ ," Worth says with a haughty little grumble, "was that I thought Mr. Wright doesn't know what Winters' full potential really is."

Arthur raises a brow when Eames whirls on him at once to say, "Wright knows plenty. He knows a hell of a lot more than you ever do, you conceited pile of—!"

M's voice is like a thunderclap: "Winters!" Eames' mouth snaps shut at once, expression cooled into something stony. "Now," she says, quieter now that she has control again. "This looks like a disagreement of perspective, and I, for one, am grateful that you two aren't on the same team. Lord knows how much of a ruckus we've been spared. I suggest that the two of you go your separate ways before I'm forced to put something in your permanent record."

Apparently satisfied with diffusing the situation, M leaves with Moneypenny. It's only when the elevator doors close and he's left with Eames and Worth glaring at each other that Arthur realizes that he never did get a clear answer out of M about their earlier conversation. Pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache, he's about to usher Eames back toward their workshop so that they can get back to work on research, but Worth seems determined to ruin that plan.

"Appreciate the time you have left," Worth says to Arthur, bringing to bear the full sense of foreboding along with a sneer. His expression is much more pleasant when it turns toward Eames. "You should start shopping for a new Point Man, if you ask me."

"I didn't," Eames bites out. 

Worth takes it in stride. "Well, it's my advice anyway," he says. "You know as well as I do that Rhodey won't be able to keep up to your exacting standards."

"And I suppose that you think your Point Man can do better," intones Eames coldly.

The smile that spreads over Worth's face is incredibly self-satisfied. "Just think on it," he says, "before you're forced to."

**CORUMBA, BOLIVIA (NOVEMBER 2010)**

Arthur's on the run, but has managed to hide out without too much trouble. It's not his first job after his discharge from the Air Force, but after the day he's had, he's beginning to think it's the last job he's going to want for a good long while. A lot of jobs go south in the world outside of the military — a great deal more than Arthur had expected. People are expected to do their jobs in the real world, of course, but the loyalty to service and teamwork found in military organizations doesn't translate to the work ethics of regular people. Illegal dreamers aren't used to the kind of precision and efficacy that Arthur prides himself for having. It's what makes Mr. Wright such a valuable identity. 

Unfortunately, that same value has seemed to garner a lot of ill attention, and frankly, Arthur would sooner take the bad mouthing and snubbing from military coworkers than deal with the heavy-handed retaliation of rival dreamers. Worth may have thought him competition once upon a time and proven to be a spectacular pain in the ass, but at least he'd never tried to _actively_ kill Arthur.

At least he has the hope that Eames has made it out okay. Without time to arrange for a meet-up, Arthur can't know for sure where the Forger has managed to hide or if he's been captured, but neither can he go out and hunt him for himself. It leaves him worried and frustrated and restless, which are pretty much the standard three emotions Eames leaves him with on a daily basis, now that he thinks about it.

So he paces along the walls of an abandoned motel with a broken door and no electricity. It's a hole in the wall, but he has some of his things for company — his laptop with a dying battery, a prepaid cellphone, and his gun. The PASIV device is gone unless Eames has somehow managed to grab it from the hotel room. He'd like to be spending his time planning a get-away, but he won't until Eames is either with him again or found dead. In the meantime, he paces and waits.

Night is falling on the third day after the job bust when a card pops through the crack under the door. It's a welcome and familiar sight, even if the fast steps running off on light, nimble feet definitely don't belong to Eames, and Arthur scoops it from the floor immediately. It's an invitation — simple and to-the-point — in Eames' distinctive script telling him "Rua Delamare and Rua Vinte e Um de Setembro. 3am; tonight." 

It's dangerous idea to venture out, but Arthur trusts the source of the summons. Refusing to go isn't an option Arthur even bothers to consider.

  


The suit Arthur's wearing hasn't seen a good cleaning for the three days he's been in hiding. With all of his extra clothes left behind in the haste of flight, he’s starting to look rumpled in a vagabond kind of way. There are blood stains on the jacket and plenty of soot from the explosions, but he's cleaned up as best he can. Suspicion isn't what he needs to gather right now, and he can be grateful for his luck.

Walking quietly and smoothly in the long shadows of the alleyway, he presses close to the cool brick wall, and pauses to peer around the corner. He can admit to being a little twitchy, but also thinks that there's no such thing as too much caution when there are people looking for his blood. Footsteps on wet pavement make him slow down so that he can find the source. Mirroring and hiding behind the slap of shoes against the street, he withdraws into the deepest shadows of the alley and watches the drunken man amble past. 

The intersection that Eames has directed him to is incredibly open and unpopulated. It makes Arthur nervous just looking at it. Despite that, he slides out of the alley to the street and straightens his jacket as he takes a look around. Taking care to remain masked in shadow — hand ready to reach for the holster behind his hip if need be — Arthur sees exactly who he's expecting.

Eames lounges casually in a flood of streetlight, clear for all to see, his back against the lamp post as if he's merely waiting for a cab to pick him up after a late night of drinking. Somehow, Arthur isn't surprised at his reckless bravado. The light throws his form into sharp definition, even from this distance. He's the picture of relaxation — cigarette dangling from his lips, with smoke curling around his head and hanging in a haze in the light. Eames' rumpled, sorry excuse for a tourist's shirt — horrendous floral pattern and all — and his glaringly obvious Panama hat are a bit wilted around the edges. Arthur walks slowly closer, sticking to the walls of the building behind Eames' back. Stopping at the border of the puddle of light, he hesitates.

“Don't be shy, darling. I won't bite — not even a nibble.” Eames turns his shark smile fully towards Arthur and tucks his hands into the pockets of his khakis, insolent and taunting.

Arthur's lips curl wickedly in the gloom. “What if I ask nicely?” He can't hide the flirtatious tone in his voice or the unfettered relief he feels seeing Eames okay.

“Don't be a tease, Arthur. I might take you seriously and have my heart broken, hmm?”

“You might be surprised.” Arthur finally drops his hand from his holster and reaches instead for his cigarettes. "Now, come on. We shouldn't be out like this."

  


In the time they've been apart, Eames has managed to secure a few of items of import along with a shabby motel room on the edge of the city: a few sets of clothes for each of them, the PASIV, and two train tickets to freedom. The train won't be leaving for a couple days — just enough time for the heat to ease off the hunt a little more — and the motel room's been paid up besides. Arthur throws himself into the shower with relief, but when he comes back out, he's sweating and sticky all over again.

"Fuck, this week has been awful," Arthur says as he dresses himself in the clothes Eames had laid out for him. He leaves the coat alone and pulls on the vest over his shirt before rolling up his sleeves to the elbow. Already he's feeling sluggish with the heat, and with a grateful groan, he sinks into the cushions of an ugly-as-hell sofa as he eyes Eames from across the room. "What do you think?"

Eames laughs from his perch against the sealed French doors that give a view of the motel's weedy garden. He’s conceded much more to the heat than Arthur — and much sooner. Over half of his his shirt is unbuttoned — its once crisp cotton is damp with sweat — and Arthur can catch glimpses of Eames' many tattoos over the looping neckline of his wife-beater.

“I never thought I’d miss the bloody Russian winter," starts Eames, vocal as always in his irritation, "but this damn heat is nearly worse than waking up to gunfire.”

Even with the sun having dipped behind the buildings, Bolivia’s cloying midday heat hasn’t abated, making their inability to leave their run-down hotel room even more tortuous. So, they waste time by catching each other up to speed with the situation. 

Getting their hands on a PASIV device had been the most tenuous part of the plan, in the beginning, and its current safety can be attributed to one of Arthur’s old acquaintances, Jensen. Under normal circumstances, someone with connections to the black market might find movement a bit difficulty, but Jensen is legally dead and a world-class hacker besides, so he can pretty much move however he wants. Eames is very amused at Arthur having “dead” friends — especially once he learns that Arthur hadn’t simply reconnected with his old friend after his ignoble departure from military service but had been in contact with him all along. 

(“Rather scandalous for someone as proper as you tended to be, Arthur," Eames had commented.) 

"A real piece of work, your Jensen," Eames says now, grunting as he lights up a fresh cigarette from and starts pulling off his open shirt by the sleeves. "I've never seen someone look quite as harassed as he did just because someone shot at him."

While Eames plows ever onward with his thoughts on why the job went bad, Arthur mulls over his regretful decision to put on a fresh suit, even if he'd foregone the coat and tie. He clings tenaciously to the layers he's put on out of stubbornness, but gives in to the pressure of heat and humidity by undoing all four of the vest's buttons, along with his top three shirt buttons. Tripping slightly over his commentary as soon as he's noticed Arthur's movement, Eames gives him the expected leer at the sight of bare skin, but he's already wilting at the edges, fuzzy and lethargic as the lingering daylight saps the energy from him. It gives Arthur the excuse to look back though, to admire the face and form of a man he'd hesitated to hope to see again. 

Eames is only slightly different outside the military than he was in — a bit more vocal in his thoughts and a bit heavier with the vices, but mostly the same. He hasn't changed like Arthur's changed, though Arthur doesn't know if he can count the exchange of dress uniforms for suits as a real difference. Primarily, it's the cigarettes and the fact that he smokes them like they're going out of style.

He's been chain smoking for most of their conversation, and Arthur is growing more irritated with every cigarette he lights. They aren’t his favored clove cigarettes, but after the day he’s had, they smell fabulous. Stretching languidly, he tilts his head back against the ugly couch upholstery and wishes he were sharing Eames' smoke.

"What were we thinking?" Eames muses, when they've divulged everything pertinent and have nothing else to give each other but quiet, thickened with smoke and humid heat. "This job was a shit piece of work from the start. You and I," he says, taking a final pull off his cigarette and flicking it out the window. "The heat must have got to us by the time we got the request. We were crazy for even thinking we could handle a job like this."

Arthur watches him pop a fresh stick out of the carton and greedily takes in the way Eames bares the side of his throat as he lights it with his last match. The fresh breath of smoke is filled with enough sticky flavor to make his teeth ache for a taste. “You were crazy when I first met you; you can’t blame it on the heat — I know better.”

“Shut it, you. I’m not the only one here who's gone off the deep end. It was your idea to contact the guy some CIA puppet-master tried to frame and murder. You’re definitely cracked if you don’t realize that’s going to come back to bite us in the arse eventually.” Eames sighs and takes another drag. Gesturing with the glowing butt, he continues. “Of course, that’s if Jensen can even manage that bit of magic he promised.”

“Jensen will come through.” Arthur glares at Eames from the corner of his eye, but is really feeling too lethargic to put up a good argument. He stretches out a hand toward Eames, flicking his first two fingers meaningfully, and assures Eames: “He always does.”

“Nice of you to have so much faith in him,” Eames says as he holds out his cigarette with a raised brow and when Arthur nods, taps out a second cigarette from his pack. He has to stand to put it between Arthur's fingers, but doesn't seem to mind coming to a stop in front of Arthur's sprawl.

Though he hadn't planned on giving in, now that he has the cigarette in his hand, Arthur is glad that Eames had been willing to spare it. Even unlit, the feel of the papered filter is entirely centering. They might not be his usual clove — or even any good brand of cigarette at all — but the notion is there. As he tongues the filter between his lips, Arthur explains: “Jensen once dragged me thirty-six clicks in the Iranian desert with a concussion, a sprained ankle, and four broken ribs while I was unconscious and bleeding. Having faith in him is the least I can do.”

"My, how you've loosened up," Eames comments. "Are you sure you're my Arthur? Shouldn't your faith be justified by a file on his history as opposed to a single instance of good will toward your person?" He smiles warmly down at Arthur and says, "Not that I mind, of course. I rather like you alive."

Arthur arches a brow. "Mr. Eames," he drawls and leans in the depths of the sofa, shifting his knees just enough apart that Eames can step between them. “Have you ever known me to be anything less than—" here, he tilts his head to look up at Eames, at the dull burn of his cigarette and the fold of his mouth around its cylinder, and finishes with an insinuating edge, "— _fully informed_?”

“There's my Mr. Wright,” says Eames with a quirky smile. His eyes flick over the picture Arthur presents of himself — the splay of his legs, the angle of his neck, the exposed triangle of his chest. Abruptly, he drops one knee to the edge of the sofa and braces one hand by Arthur's head. "Does this mean you're taking a break for once, then?"

Laughing at the hopeful lilt to Eames' voice, Arthur is encouraged by the return of the other man’s flirtations. It’s been a long time; though he’d never say so, he’s been worried that working this job together might have put too hard a strain on their new positions in life as free men. Up until this point, Arthur had only heard of Eames' break into the illegal dreaming community by word of mouth. Though it seems they'd both leaped at the opportunity to work together again, Arthur had nurtured the concern that such a familiar face might be too much of a burden for Eames' somewhat fragile state. It seems his worries had been needless after all; Eames looks no closer to breaking now than he had before Russia. That's all the reassurance that Arthur needs right now to relax.

Pushing himself from the back of the sofa into a more upright position with one elbow, Arthur rests one hand at Eames' hip and says before rolling his cigarette to the bow of his lips, "Light me up. Then we can talk."

With a chuckle, Eames tilts toward him. He steadies Arthur by fitting a hand over his ribs, keeping a distance between them as he guides the tip of his cigarette to Arthur's. He takes a couple breaths — both slow, deep burns that Arthur matches with his own — until both cigarettes have turned red, and Arthur drops back into the sofa cushions, convinced for a single moment that Eames is going to just follow him down. Instead, he angles himself to the side and flops down next to Arthur. He does set one hand on Arthur's thigh, however, so that's encouraging.

"Alright," Eames agrees, squeezing his fingers around Arthur's knee. His voice practically purrs as he taps excess ash onto the floor. "Let's talk."

Talking starts off slow — with tiny, incremental confessions — but pretty soon, they're both weighted down with smoke and heat. It's a bit like being intoxicated, Arthur realizes, as he listens to Eames talk about his totem in vague, non-descriptive terms and watches him rub his thumb over the surface of a very normal looking poker chip. 

"I still dream," Eames admits. It's not much of a surprise to Arthur, though, because as much as he would have expected Eames to have lost that ability by now, with how long they've been in the dreaming business, he's come to learn that Eames exceeds most explanation. "Not as much as I used to, mind. But—"

Eames trails off, but Arthur picks it up. "Your mind is pretty resilient."

"Yes, well," he hedges. "It'd have to be, wouldn't it?"

"I used to dream about being a real world architect," Arthur says. 

The nicotine in his system is doing its job at last, sinking into his bones and letting him fit his body in next to Eames. It's the same fit as it was in England, only there's no responsibility here. There's no dream to counteract; no projection to be fended off. It's just the weight of Eames' palm over his thigh and the sharp, salty tang of sweat and smoke.

Eames leans into Arthur and murmurs his next words into Arthur's hair. "What do you dream about now?"

"Nothing," Arthur tells him. "I can't afford to dream anymore."

It's a lie in its own way. While he sleeps without dreaming, he still wants in different ways. He ends up circling around his desires during the day, picking at them without revealing them. The fact of the matter is that he would like to stay exactly like this — quiet and settled in the wake of some fast paced work with Eames at his side — but reality makes it impossible. The identities of Winters and Mr. Wright have grown too large — too cumbersome and sentient — to be of any practical use. Though it's nice to be recognized for one's skill, it's obvious now that this job in Bolivia had reached him and Eames too easily; a year ago this job would have been considered too risky to attempt, and three years ago no one would have thought it possible.

This is their doing. Mr. Wright and Winters change the game with every job they take, and Bolivia isn't going to be any different. He fears that the attention this is bound to bring them — at a time when they need less, not more — will be the end of them. The problem with legends is that they're never as perfect as people imagine (no men are), but people have no sympathy for such failings in their myths and fables. It would be like being torn apart by projections, at a time when Arthur (and Eames, if he was correct) is least equipped to handle such things.

He's unsettled — off balance one might say, if one was not Arthur and had room for such things — and more wary than he's been since he'd stepped into COT for the very first time, freshly eighteen and still shiny and new (before the world had given him a patina of aloofness) with his uniform still wrapped in plastic in his backpack.

When he'd agreed to take this job with Eames, he had thought of it as a challenge. As a way to test skills that he feared might grow rusty without a legitimate use or even a forum in which to exercise them. Now, sitting in a sweltering hotel room in Bolivia, he begins to think that it's a trap of their own making.

 _A trap or an opportunity?_ he thinks.

Testing the idea, he says, "Maybe we should take advantage of the situation."

“Advantage, Mr. Wright?” Eames is flirting again, with his nose still pressed into his hair, so he must be marginally interested in what Arthur might suggest. “How so?”

“I've been thinking," Arthur says as he pulls a short breath off his cigarette. It's the third he's bummed off Eames, with them getting subsequent lights from each other while they lean together and wait for night to fall completely. "'Mr. Wright' has had a good run, but maybe it's time for him to retire in a more permanent manner." He covers the hand Eames still has over his knee. "Maybe 'Winters' too."

Eames' eyebrow rise incredulously, “Well darling, what did you have in mind?” This drag on his cigarette is slower; thoughtful.

“Something with flair, I think.” Arthur allows the tiniest of grins to creep onto his face.

“A naturally dramatic exit from the stage,” Eames agrees with amused severity. "We only deserve the most impressive departure from the business, of course."

“Of course.” 

Eames has been using words like that all day — _we_ and _us_ instead of _I_ and _you_ — and talking about retirement, even with playful seriousness, makes Arthur sit up and twist to look Eames in the face. Hand braced on the battered couch back, he muses, “A joint retirement? Should Mr. Wright expect to see a great deal of Winnie once they're on vacation?”

A grin quirks Eames' lips, and he drawls, “Perhaps,” as his hand shifts from Arthur's knee to his waist, thumbing over the top of his belt with a comfortable breach of his personal space.

Taking a deep breath before letting the smoke curl softly out of his mouth, Arthur leans into Eames' touch as he speaks, “I think poison should do the trick.”

"No explosives?" When Arthur makes a face at the suggestion, Eames chuckles and squeezes his hip. “You know, darling, the majority of poisoners are women. They can't stand the mess of less civilized methods.” His smirk has incited lesser men than Arthur to do violence, but right now, he's distracted by the idea of having nothing in the way of building a fresh life with Eames beside him.

“I thought our undamaged corpses would be easier to produce than our mangled, blown up remains.” Arthur narrows his eyes and continues, “You would want to blow something up when faking your own death.”

This draws a rich laughter from Eames as he shifts to drag Arthur closer. “I'm not allowed to have some fun before I die?”

“The last time I let you to blow anything up, you nearly did die.”

“Fair enough,” Eames concedes. “What kind of poison then?”

“Something slipped into the Somnacin by an 'untrustworthy' chemist?” Arthur offers as Eames tilts his mouth up to kiss the underside of his jaw.

After the barest of touch of his lips, Eames draws back to raise both brows incredulously. “Literally? Something to put us in some sort of coma then. Like that ho-dun toxin?”

“Perhaps," Arthur says.

“'Perhaps'? You're the one who wants to actually poison us. Forgive me for wanting a little specificity.”

Raising his eyebrow, Arthur laughs, “Really, Mr. Eames? You've taken potentially fatal jobs with much less 'specificity.'”

“Hush, darling. Smugness doesn't become you.” He smirks. “You do realize that if we're poisoned, they'll take us back for autopsy? And if that happens...” He gestures vaguely through the air.

Arthur pauses. “How much plastic explosive would you need?”

Eames grins.

  


The moment is now. It's time to move or get caught and there's no way either of them is going to stand for that. Arthur already has all his gear set to go and Eames has his satchel slung around his body, cutting into the sweat beading over his shoulder. They duck out of the door, one after the other, into the sweltering heat, into the bright sunlight, and they stand just past the threshold together, lingering for the last moment they had. Perhaps, they won't see each other for quite a while.

It seems that they both think it at the same time because they turn to look at each other, remembering everything they'd confessed in the heavy hours they'd been trapped here. Arthur opens his mouth as though he wants to say something (something horrible, like goodbye maybe) and is thankfully distracted by the sound of gunshots, rapid fire, behind him. 

Eames catches Arthur around the waist as he turns back, splaying his fingers along his back, along the fine curve of his spine, and tucks Arthur against his body. He presses a kiss to Arthur's lips — very fast, very sweet, before Arthur can even draw his gun and maybe change his mind about Eames all over again — and says: "Darling," before slipping quickly away.

  


[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594992)[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594824)[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594853)[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594992)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595230)[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595230)


	6. Serial 5

**LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2009)**

When their team is dreaming — under for fifteen minutes in order to explore the possibility of a new maze of Mallorie's — Arthur and Eames stay up top to talk. It's nothing they arrange beforehand, but Arthur's made a point of sitting at his computer while everyone else was doing the calculations for the Somnacin dosage. Eames offers to watch over the PASIV and depresses the plunger to start the dream before joining Arthur at his desk.

"I wouldn't mind anything that Worth says," is Eames' lead in. He leans against the corner of the desk and crosses his arms. "He's too arrogant by half. Not worth our time."

"Worth is not actually my main concern," Arthur admits. "It's something M was probably trying to tell me, but Worth has only justified my suspicions."

Eames looks down at him. "I'm not following."

"M was making comments about me not needing to worry about finding work if I were to ever leave dream sharing," he explains. "She was pretty vague about why, but with Worth saying things about me not sticking around, I have to wonder if there isn't some merit to what he was saying."

The way Eames looks at him changes into something pensive, as if he'd never considered taking Worth's words seriously until Arthur brought up M. Eames' brow furrows, and his next words come slowly, carefully: "There's no reason to think you would leave before the end of program."

"Isn't there?" Arthur isn't so sure himself, but even though he would like to find for himself if there is, he has nothing to point him in the right direction. "If it's enough for M—"

"I'll look into it."

Arthur looks up at Eames. He sounds serious about it, which shouldn't be a surprise to Arthur, except that it is and continues to be over the next few days. Eames leaves the team in Arthur's care, and next thing Arthur knows, he's catching Eames rubbing elbows with people all over the place. It's because he doesn't know what Eames means by _I’ll look into it_ that Arthur is nervous. While Eames is conducting business or investigating, Arthur finds himself, more often than not, leaving their team to their own devices so that he can pace the halls and just watch Eames work. Whenever Arthur returns to his observation after glancing away for just a moment, the other man has approached a whole, different person just to chat, quietly, and sometimes shake hands or smile. At the end of each day, Arthur is seething out of frustration. He can't stand not knowing what's going on, and Eames gives him the most bare-bones of updates.

"Nothing's pointing to you, specifically," is what Eames explains to him. "It's just suspicions on everyone's parts and frankly, you Americans are easy targets."

"But why are there even suspicions in the first place, Eames?" Arthur asks. He shoves his hands through his hair, putting it into complete disarray, and then pushes himself from his seat toward his computer. "You're doing all this and then telling me nothing. I should just look for myself."

Eames follows closely and grabs Arthur's hands before they can touch the keyboard. "Don't," he says. "It'll look bad for you to look into things yourself."

"Okay, fine." He's trying to speak as calmly as he can, which is probably why he sounds waspish even to himself. "Then tell me why it looks bad. What are people saying?"

Heaving a sigh that seems inappropriately put-upon from Arthur's perspective, Eames deigns to explain himself. "The Administrative Department," he starts, "keeps track of the files of all the participants in this project — everyone from the administrators themselves to the janitorial service to the dreamers and volunteer Marks in between." 

"I know that already," Arthur snaps.

Eames waves aside the snipe and carries on. "Well, it seems that there's been a lot of activity going on in that department. It's not under your name — no more than I've known you to request information — but there is a large number of requests that have been made by people who aren't even team leaders or even participants in the program."

"Huh." That _is_ suspicious. "So, information on what exactly? Dreamers or the people in charge?"

"Dreamers. And—" here, Eames taps his nose, "—it should be noted that none of the files requested belong to American dreamers. Hence, the directed suspicion."

"Our files would be useless anyway," Arthur explains. "If you'd seen them, you'd know that my government would only have supplied yours with the minimal information necessary to make this project work in the first place."

"Believe me, I've seen them," Eames sighs, patting Arthur on the back of the hand. "The fact remains that, seeing how things are, a lot of people are going to be difficult to work with from now on. They're going to be nervous about their information being out there in someone else's hands. M, of course, would like things to run smoothly all the time, but she can't change anything without proof of your innocence or someone else's guilt."

Arthur's taken aback. "So that's it?" He pulls his hands back from Eames and nudges him to the side to get to his computer. "There wasn't a pattern to anything that you noticed? What about dates? Was there any particular attention paid to a dreamer?"

"I guess I can't keep you from doing your job," Eames mutters. 

Arthur wants to just gesture broadly at himself and say, _Point Man_. "You can't," he agrees as he signs into the computer and starts pulling up programs. "It was my mistake to let you look into things on your own when I could be doing the same."

Eames wraps his hand around one of Arthur's wrists, stilling his typing. "Arthur," he says and waits until he's looked up before continuing. "Would it really be so bad if things ended now?"

"What are you saying?" Arthur asks. His chest feels tight at the suggestion. "What about the rest of the project? Don't you want to see things through?"

"I couldn't give a shit about the project," Eames confesses. "I've already got what I wanted out of this project, and I thought you did, too." His fingers squeeze infinitesimally against Arthur's pulse point. "I never thought we'd have the chance to work together."

Arthur wants to pull away from Eames but can't bring himself to do so. The fatalistic, nostalgic way that Eames is talking implies that the end of the project is nigh, and Arthur just wants to grab him, shake him, and shout that it isn't over yet. There might be some dissent among the European dreamers if the Americans stayed, but that didn't matter to Arthur in the long run so long as he kept his team and he kept working with Eames. While Eames was right about him having already got what he wanted from the collaborative project, it didn't mean that he wanted to let it go any time soon.

"We're not done yet," Arthur says and is confused when Eames looks away. "Oh, my god. You can't _actually_ believe that I'm the one doing this."

"Well of course not, darling," Eames says with an appeasing tone as he turns to look back at Arthur, "but I _know_ you."

"But everyone else is different," Arthur finishes for him.

"Yes," Eames replies pointedly. "Yes, they're different than you. Look at how the situation is, Arthur. Someone among us is interested — very interested — in the personal information of dreamers. Can you expect me to just brush that aside when you know as well as I do how that information can be exploited?"

"I expect you to be willing to dig deep enough to find the real culprit," Arthur argues.

Eames frowns. "Right, but you don't think it could possibly be an American."

Arthur shakes his head. "I don't know who it is, but neither can I trust your judgement when you seem willing enough to think it isn't me."

"Well, it wouldn't be, would it?" Eames says. "You already know more than my file would ever give anyone."

"And that's supposed to mean what, exactly?" Arthur asks.

"It means that, as much as the guilty party is interested in everyone else, they're very interested in me." Eames licks his lips with a resigned smack. "My file's been requested at least ten or fifteen times, each under a different name with progressively higher security clearances," he says and then off of Arthur's worried look, reassures him with: "They wouldn't be able to get anything. My information's about as well protected as it gets — as you well know."

Reminded of when he'd tried hunting down Eames' information, Arthur feels a little warm. It seems so long ago; so many things have happened since then. Still, it bothers him that he's never seen a file on Eames that wasn't blacked out considerably. That other people have been looking for Eames with what are likely to be far fewer good intentions makes him uneasy.

"I would be grateful," Arthur tells Eames, "except that your mystery seems to be grabbing a lot of attention."

"I wouldn't worry," is apparently Eames' idea of comfort. It only makes Arthur worry more. "Really. The only things they would find are my work records. Well, that and my code name." Eames' smile is all warmth as it spreads across his face. "Concentrate on the project for a while, Arthur. Let me handle the rest. Can you do that?"

Arthur doesn't say anything for a while. He wants to believe Eames, but can't help but worry that the other man's bias has caused him to miss something vital. Eames seems insistent, though.

"Give it another few days, and I'll have everything taken care of, Arthur," he says, ducking a little to give Arthur a pleading look and squeezing his hand around Arthur's fingers. "Trust me, Arthur, please."

Squeezing back, Arthur sighs. "Alright."

  


When Eames leaves to continue his investigation, Arthur sits at his desk doing nothing for a while. He's listless and keeps rubbing at the wrist Eames had wrapped his hand around. The sight of the other man's reassuring smile isn't enough to wipe away his worries and frankly, he can't forget how Eames had brushed aside the culprit's obvious and possibly personal interest in him as unimportant compared to Arthur. 

With that in mind, Arthur does some digging of his own, starting with the Administrative Department. He compiles the things he finds onto a small flash drive. At first sight, the first document he saves looks just like dates, but Arthur highlights the ones that match between his visits to the Technology Department and the dates listed for file requests from the Administrative Department. It's not a leap of logic that everyone would have made, but the two sections are across the hall from each other. It's easy to go to the Administration to pick up the file on a Mark and then a few steps to Tech to pick up a PASIV; Arthur's done it himself a couple times, but this is what he figures M finds suspicious enough to confront him.

The second document is more supposition on Arthur's part. It has the dates of the file requests, just like the first, but this time they're matched up with links to camera footage of Worth. Arthur remembers how Worth had always been lurking nearby when Arthur was picking up or turning in a PASIV to Tech, and though he hadn't thought much of it at the time, it suddenly becomes important to note that Worth had never seemed to have a PASIV with him at the time and Arthur had always been the first to leave the area. It's not enough to cast suspicion on Worth — especially considering that there are scattered dates that don't match at all — but maybe it's enough to give Arthur a finger to point in another direction.

There's a third document that lists the names of all the requested files in order of frequency. Eames' code name is at the top with a count of just over forty inquiries. After Eames, the request count drops markedly to the single digits. There are a few interesting notes Arthur's made in the margins. There are no requests for files on the American dreamers — none at all. It's not altogether surprising because the Americans are all the team leaders, but it bothers Arthur considerably to think that no one had thought to look into those files. Also of note is that Commander Bartlett's name is so high up the list at three requests, only one of which belongs to Arthur.

Arthur also manages to dig up a general report that had been sent to M regarding the progress of all the teams. As far as he can tell, Worth and his team haven't been making much progress, having only just put in the request for a volunteer Mark with a low difficulty rating. It wouldn't be anything worth noting since sometimes people just don't work well together, but Arthur knows that the American Extractor in charge of them is gifted with extraordinary people skills. There's no way he wouldn't have managed to work something out unless there were teammates that were just too busy elsewhere to be of any use.

He's at his desk through the night, but by morning, he's feeling like it's been a productive night. His body aches and every move feels sluggish. He thinks that coffee sounds like a great idea and goes to make a fresh pot. Going through the motions is almost enough to wake him up on its own, but it's quick work to pour out some grinds into a filter and water into the tank. When he turns around to lean against the counter, tired and feeling it, M is standing at his desk.

"You've been busy," M says in lieu of a hello as she taps at his keyboard. "That seems to be your _raison d'etre_ , Mr. Wright. I can't say it's unexpected, but that you've become a problem for me overnight is something I didn't see coming."

Tired and regretting his fervor from yesterday already, Arthur scrubs at his face and says, "I didn't realize I'd reached that level of efficiency. May I ask what you're referring to precisely?"

"You got into my mail last night," M clarifies as she plugs the flash drive of his research into the computer and opens it up. "While you didn't take anything of real import, the fact that you could is very dangerous. You sent my security into fits."

"You don't seem worried about it," he feels inclined to point out.

"Word is that you can be trusted," M tells him. "That doesn't change the fact that this looks very bad for everyone. As much as I might be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, you've incriminated yourself."

That snaps Arthur to attention. "You're not interested in what I found?"

M holds up his flash drive after she ejects it from his computer. "I have what you found, and I'm sure it'll be an interesting read. However, that situation is for me to deal with separately from you. Even if I take your information on your word, I cannot excuse that you broke through my security."

Arthur bows his head and grips the edge of the counter with both hands until his knuckles turn white. He can feel her judgement approaching from a mile off. "Maybe if you looked at it first, you wouldn't have to—" he tried. 

"Mr. Wright, the collaboration between our programs ends today," M cut in smoothly. "Drink your coffee, get some breakfast and pack your bags. It's a long flight home."

After M leaves with the flash drive tucked into her blazer pocket, Arthur pours himself a cup of coffee and sits. He feels wrecked. He's not angry — at least, not at M. He'd compiled the information for Eames to work with, but M having it is even better. He's not even upset that the project is over except for what it means: that he's leaving. He nurses his coffee and tries to feel something other than utterly worthless. His computer pings with a new email — an announcement regarding the premature dissolving of the project due to extraneous circumstances — and he only manages to read the first few lines before Eames walks in.

Apparently having already heard the news, Eames drags a chair over to Arthur's side and slumps into it with an unhappy expression. "Morning," he says. "You were here all night not taking my advice then?"

"Yeah," Arthur answers and neither of them say anything for a few heartbeats. "If you're waiting for an apology, you'll be here for a long time."

It's a twist on one of the first things Eames had ever said to him. Recognizing it, Eames smiles wryly at him. Arthur half expects for him to make a quip, to make light of the situation so that Arthur won't feel like he's so heavy. He says instead: "Mallorie will be upset that you're leaving."

Arthur nods. "I know. I'll miss her too." 

He pushes his coffee away; he's lost his taste for it. Eames is watching him when he turns to look. Arthur wishes they could just do whatever they wanted — whatever jobs they wanted, wherever they wanted, without people telling them it was wrong. As they were now, there would always be their governments between them, demanding a loyalty that Arthur, at least, wasn't feeling much any more.

"I bet you could get the information from M if you wanted," Arthur says.

"Did you want me to do something with it?" Eames asks.

"Just look at it," he tells him. "I don't care what you do with it afterward. It's not like it will help me now, but you should look at it. Especially if you're thinking of working with Worth. Maybe you'll come to the same conclusions that I did."

Arthur can't think of anything to say after that. Eames has made it clear already that he's got what he wanted out of the project, therefore its ending doesn't affect him nearly as much as it does Arthur. Even looking around now, Arthur can't help but wish to stay forever in this place that's allowed him to work as he pleased for such a short while. He'll be back in the States again, back to his cubicle, his small apartment in Ohio, and what little family he has left. It should be comforting in its own way, but Arthur keeps circling around how returning home means doing so without Eames. He guesses that he should be grateful that they at least they have this moment to say their goodbyes.

When he looks at Eames to do that, though, Arthur can't get the words out. He can't say anything. He's stuck looking at Eames' face and his lost, sad expression, and the breath that he'd gathered to speak just flows out of him. 

Eames leans toward him. "Arthur—"

Then the door to the workshop slams open, and Eames retreats just as quickly as Mallorie storms in. "Mr. Wright!" she shouts. "What is going on?"

She's talking about the project and about Arthur going home, but Arthur is caught up in how Eames' profile had closed down as soon as she'd entered. He grabs his cup of coffee and stands to go pour it out. It's cold, he doesn't want it any more, and he should be packing his things for the trip. 

"I'm sorry, Mal," he says, picking up his jacket from the back of his desk chair. "I only just found out this morning, myself. If I knew any details, I'd tell you." She shakes her head at him, curls bouncing around her shoulders. "I have to get ready to leave, so if the both of you could give the others my apologies?"

Mal nods, her brow furrowed with a little confusion. "Of course," she says as she follows him to the door of the workshop. "But we'll get a chance to say goodbye to you before you leave, won't we?"

"If there's time," he agrees and meets Eames' eyes over Mallorie's shoulder, "I'll be glad to have you see me off."

He doesn't get the chance to see anyone. He spends the afternoon packing and signing forms that swear him to secrecy. By the time he's done, he's being swept toward the roof, luggage and all. Arthur has a plane ticket in his coat pocket, and his luggage already being carted toward a large helicopter that will take him and the rest of the Americans to the airport. He half expects M to be there like she had when they had arrived, but she's absent. There are plenty of others present in her stead — mostly security with clusters of dreamers in the European program — but most significantly, there's Eames.

He's standing off to the side, so that he's not in the way of the luggage or the security around the American dreamers. Everyone is sort of getting rushed along, and Arthur wants to step toward him and claim the moment that neither of them had been able to earlier. It would only take a little time to say the proper goodbye that they deserve, but pretty quickly, Arthur's caught by the elbow and directed to get into the helicopter.

Arthur does as he's told, but looks back before he can climb fully into the helicopter. They lock eyes through the throng of people between them just long enough for him to give Eames this playful, mocking salute. In return, Eames smiles — a curl of his mouth that's soft and sweet — and winks. It isn't a great way to say goodbye, Arthur figures, without plans to meet again or some kind of closure, but when he finds his seat in the helicopter, he isn't surprised to find himself pursing his lips against a smile that's bittersweet.

**NEW YORK STATE, UNITED STATES (JUNE 2011)**

Last time they'd seen each other, they'd gone their separate ways in a rush but Arthur remembers it perfectly even if he won't admit out loud that he often finds himself going over those last moments when he's alone. They're a comfort at the oddest of moments — when he's been city hopping for a while and wonders when he's going to finally relax and remember that he's not a part of the Somnacin Project anymore, that the PASIV device he has was theirs up until about two months ago.

Now is before he finds Mallorie again, and her husband Cobb, but it's after Bolivia has become a well worn memory with its smoky non-confessions and that kiss — where Winters... where Eames had dipped into his space like a lightning bolt and kissed him like a shock.

Now is on accident.

Now is the north shore of Long Island, not far from New York.

Arthur is at a party and, it turns out, so is Eames.

"Arthur, dear!" cries an older woman — Maude, his host and the mother of his client. "Where have you been all night? I have someone I'm absolutely dying for you to meet!"

It's champagne chill against his fingertips. It's the crisp breeze in the wind. It's the live band with its soft tones and its sweet solos. It's the crawling tremor of anticipation when he hears grass crunching underfoot behind him, and he knows before he even turns—

"Unexpected," murmurs Eames, "but not at all unpleasant."

Maude seems disappointed to not be the source of a new connection but seems content to let them reacquaint themselves. Eames looks good, Arthur decides when he does finally look at him. He's not worn at the edges like he was after Russia, nor is he the dirty-playing and over-rebellious man from Bolivia that pushed borders and scrabbled for purchase. He's clean and calm lines of sophistication here, and the way he's tucked his hand into his pocket actually helps that.

Here, Mr. Wright would have asked which party-member was a client, if he needed to worry about conflicting business, but Arthur doesn't. He steps in close, exchanges his champagne flute for two fresh ones from a passing waiter, and offers the second to Eames as he says:

"It's been a while. We should catch up."

Eames' smile is brilliant.

Arthur tilts his head off to the side. "Solarium?"

The champagne disappears before they reach the edge of the party and the glasses get left on a short wall of brick outlining the gardens, and they duck past perfectly lined trees and climbing ivory and into the glass walls of the solarium with it's sweetly-scented humidity and the darkly shadowed greenery glistening under the glow of tiny white lights. Eames laughs as he stumbles down the few short steps to the plush-cushion-on-grid-iron chaise, and he pulls Arthur to him. There's no guard between them right now — not like it had kind of been in Bolivia and not like it had been even earlier. Not like how it will be later when they'll have to worry about the ghosts of their past. It's as if meeting anew — with their new names and new identities and new pasts — has set them free.

They still come together with the same knowledge of each other — in a sense. Arthur knows to go slow and let Eames feel his heat before continuing. Eames knows to slip his arm under Arthur's jacket to free the gun from his holster before carrying on. And it's kind of funny, knowing these things while exploring this new part. To learn the soft feel of Eames' mouth while the muscles between Arthur's shoulder blades tremble quietly with the strain of going as slowly as he needs, to not rush the kiss like they had the last time.

He slots their mouths together easily, lets the motion of it all become a gentle sway back and forth between them — the pull of Eames' mouth to the push of Arthur's. Eames isn't much shorter than him, not enough to be much of a difference when they're viewed together, but this close — this close — the tilt of Arthur's head becomes more apparent.

In the distance, the live band is trying out an old French tune — something lovely and crooning — and Eames swells in the wake of it, surging up into the kiss. He fists his hands at Arthur's waist, pulling at his shirt, and — really, this humidity is as good a reason as the encouragement Eames whispers to discard his jacket. Eames helps him shove it down his arms but proceeds to tug at Arthur's tie and collar while his hands are trapped in the sleeves. He laughs, hot and low against the line of Arthur's neck, and his knuckle rests at the top of his breastbone like a promise while his mouth sucks dark evidence of the truth to the surface.

Eames is careful — plucking Arthur's clothes open with delicate fingers... individual buttons and individual articles of clothing. Arthur doesn't have the same problem. He yanks Eames' shirt up, pulls it half way up his chest so that when Arthur wraps his arm around his waist, all he can feel is skin and more skin. Arthur dips his fingers into the line of his spine, between the hard muscle of his back, over little scars and then down — down past the hard leather of his belt and the elastic of his underwear until his fingertips are almost sliding between his cheeks.

Eames melts into him immediately — grips Arthur's arms in both hands as he breathes hard and hot against his cheek. "Arthur," he warns as he closes what little distance they have between them. "I swear—"

Arthur kisses him again — with greater force and the need to possess this moment — and gives in to the desire to tip Eames back onto the chaise he so cheerfully had sidled toward earlier. Folding over him is easy. Bracing himself over Eames is easier still when those long legs slide open to accommodate his width. The whole process of undressing is so much harder like this — braced on one hand while the other hand works, but Eames has decided to be helpful at last, pulling at his own clothes and shoving them off the end of the chaise before going for Arthur's belt. Eames says dirty things while Arthur kisses all the skin he can reach — the sharp line of his collarbone and the muscle of his shoulder and his ear and the skin behind it and his forehead, everything.

He kisses the dark lines of the tattoo as it curls around Eames' neck and the theatrical masks on his chest while he listens to Eames say: "I was watching you long before Maude told me you were here. Looked so good standing around like you couldn't give a shit about the caviar that's sixty pounds a pop or the fireworks or the dancing. I couldn't wait—"

He slides his hand into Arthur's pants, wraps around him and strokes him firmly as he pulls him into the open air. He smiles at the way Arthur whimpers and pushes up on his elbows to continue his dialogue against Arthur's open mouth.

"Couldn't wait until I had you in my hands, hearing you shout my name so loud that they'll hear you over the band."

It should be less erotic than it is perhaps. The humidity and the sweat has left Arthur feeling a little sticky and the champagne makes his head swim. But Eames has his jacket and shirt crumpled under his weight with Arthur's gun sitting at his hip and his legs to either side of Arthur's body and his feet are sliding against his clothed calves. And he's looking at Arthur like he's got nothing else worth looking at in the world.

Arthur is about to tease — to say that he'd like to see Eames try — but Eames tugs at him, slow and smooth before twisting to search for something in his coat pocket. Having closed his eyes at the feeling of Eames' hand on him, at the calluses that make the whole experience a little rougher, there's no warning at all beyond the click of the tube opening before Eames is sliding lubricant over the whole length of him.

He laughs as he shakes in Eames' grip. "So little foreplay, Eames? I'm surprised."

"Darling," Eames chides and maybe Arthur swoons a little when Eames' hand leaves him to dip between his own legs. "We've had a few years of foreplay as it is. I think we've had enough."

The shaking doesn't stop as he lifts and spreads Eames' knees, but for the first time, he can feel the tremble of Eames' body — the tension that hardens his thighs and the way he holds his breath, not necessarily in anticipation. 

"Eames," he says. Then instead: "Daniel."

And Eames looks up at him wonderingly and smiles with that cheeky curl around the corner of his mouth. The tension loosens under Arthur's hands and he presses closer.

"Well what are you waiting for, Arthur?" Eames asks, touching the tip of Arthur's cock with his fingers. "Morning waits for no man."

They kiss as they slide together. Eames guides Arthur with his hand and Arthur strokes his thumbs under Eames' knees before tucking them around his waist. It's wet and sweaty and sticky, and Eames kind of stops breathing and Arthur kind of keeps gasping into his mouth. They both have to break away just to get air and end up tucking themselves into their necks, breathing in more sweat and more humidity.

The air is heavy but the moment is so light that Arthur doesn't mind shifting that much closer into Eames' space. Eames lights up like a firecracker — arching up and barking out a surprised noise and going red like he's about to explode. Arthur would find it fascinating that Eames — a beautiful Forger, whose skill with lies and deceit come so easily — can hide so little in these moments, if he weren't so absolutely caught up in the heat of this, in every encouragement he feels at the small of his back, for every inch of him that wants to catch this moment and string it out forever.

He gasps Eames' name over and over — the real one that Eames had given to him what seems like a lifetime ago now — and doesn't stop moving, not even when Eames grabs at his arms and starts honest-to-god mewling. He drives in — steadily and unhesitatingly. He doesn't tease out the moment — doesn't stall in the seconds before the fall just to hear Eames whine. He doesn't ask Eames what he wants, if he wants it harder or faster or anything, because he's got it right already.

He's got their fingers tangled together and their mouths against each other. He's got his shirt sticking to his back and a French song warbling through the walls and champagne bubbling through blood.

He's got Eames below him and around him and this is all of him; this is all of them.

Here in this moment, this is all of them.

This is now.

[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595185) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594824) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594853) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/594992) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595185)


	7. DEAD SPACE

**DO NOT PROCEED. CHRONOLOGICAL CHAPTERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE ALREADY FINISHED THE FIC.**


	8. Chrono 1

Extraction is a generally nasty business — has been since its conception — but Arthur has found that it gets glossed over with charming platitudes about 'next generation security' and a shiny veneer of politeness. Before the Inception Job — before Fischer, before Ariadne, before there was even the idea of defensible minds, before Mal and Cobb had ever heard of PASIV devices — life had been harder. Back then, dream sharing had still been new. Talents had to be discovered and territory, explored. Mistakes were made and risks were taken and it was like skating the cutting edge of a blade. Some people slipped, but for Arthur and Eames, they rode that edge hard and fast. Even when it cut them, they kept coming back for more. There was nothing like it.

Inception has made their group famous — to a point. (Too much attention in this business is never a good thing.) The jobs come in swarms and they can afford to be picky, charge ridiculous amounts for their participation in simple jobs, and take lengthy vacations in exotic locations, but even as he finds the evolving challenges of the mutable art of dream theft to be intriguing, though, Arthur vaguely misses the 'good old days.' 

The longer he's in the business, the more he wishes for people who understand what it was like to be a dreamer back in the old days and had experienced the thrill of pioneering techniques considered staples of the game these days. Then, the Somnacin recipe was so new and imperfect that anyone could startle themselves out of dreams. It's his (misplaced, he thinks grumpily) nostalgia that has restarted his bizarre relationship with Eames. Of the people that Arthur interacts with these days, Eames is the only person who remembers what it was like to fight for every scrap of leverage and treasure every moment of peace.

Winters — as Arthur had known him then — is still a lingering legend in the field, despite disappearing off of the map in July 2010, after a job gone wrong in Bolivia. It's sometimes a shame — as much freedom as working under new names affords — that neither of them can work under their former code names. Maybe then, Arthur could do more than think of Eames as a thief and Eames could finally branch out his expertise on other jobs as he had during Inception. It's the price they've paid, however, and their story — as Winters and as Wright — began a long time before then.

Before Cobb, they’d both been the best at the game.

Before they were legends, they had been young.

**MANDALAY, MYANMAR (AUGUST 2007)**

It starts when Arthur comes to work in the morning to find his laptop misplaced — tucked to the left of his desk instead of the usual right. What's missing is the inch-thick binder containing his research on a UN politician, who has been rather heavy-handed with policies as of late. The binder itself isn't important; the information it contains is on the hard drives of several computers in Arthur's possession. He doesn't think about the binder's absence until he powers on his laptop and starts digging for his files on the politician — because it's gone, all of it. Every folder is empty; every scrap of information relevant to his current job has been deleted.

He's on the phone immediately, calling for the portable hard drive from his office in the States to be sent to him overnight. He doesn't fret. This is only a minor setback — a glitch in the system is probably to blame — but it's one that has him on the phone for a good fifteen minutes. In the meantime, his laptop flips up a screen-saver, and instead of a digital clock, it's a revolving business card.

The program is plain — black background with a white rectangle that slowly passes from back to front, allowing Arthur plenty of time to read the message that's been left for him. _Pleasure doing business with you_ , says one side. The text is too uneven to be anything other than handwriting. With loopy Ys and plump, curvaceous Ss, the words are feminine in an annoyingly perky way. On the back, it's signed, _Winters_ , with a stylized snowflake dotting the I instead of the heart Arthur had half expected.

It's not a calling card that Arthur anticipated seeing. Even if all he's heard is rumors, the name of a excellent Forger is one he recognizes.

That's when he realizes he's been robbed and that whatever team Winters is working with now will be going after the politician Arthur has been assigned to.

Arthur's a fool to assume that "Winters" is a woman, though most Forgers are, especially when he's unable to dig up any information — not even a photograph. Arthur tells himself that Winters is part of a team and that a job, even when it's just a heist, only works as well as the team does as a whole. He assumes that Winters only manages to get past security through the masterful abilities of the rest of the team. That he let his dearth of information on Winters suggest that the Forger would be less of a threat than the rest of the team is an unacceptable oversight.

When Arthur investigates the team, he sees — and summarily dismisses — the man loitering at the edges of the group with a cup of tea cradled in his palm. Everyone else is recognizable from their files, so they’ll be the first to go; he can afford to wait for Winters. Arthur searches out the best vantage for spying on their meeting, but by the time he's situated, the courtyard they had been in is deserted.

Chasing is useless. He knows their target, so he knows where they'll end up eventually. Arthur chooses to take his time and see what the team might have left behind in their rushed departure. It's a bit disappointing to find it empty but for a slim table, upon which sits a white business card propped against a cup of tea.

 _Winters_ , says the card. It's white face shines up at Arthur — pristine and mocking. The snowflake is different, but the handwriting is familiar, if sloppier. He has a matching one as his screen saver still. Wondering if there's a message left with this card too, Arthur picks up the card and turns it over.

It reads: _Nice try, Mr. Wright_. There's even a smiley face chasing after the period.

The taunt makes Arthur scowl — more so because Winters and the rest of Arthur's competitors have slipped through his grasp yet again. Still, it's curious that he hadn't seen Winters' arrival.

Of all the people that had been in this courtyard, the only one not in Arthur's files was the man with the teacup. Broad shouldered, tattooed and with a squared-off sort of shape to him, he looked like the type to have a grounding in architecture. Arthur had dismissed him, but the signs were pointing increasingly to a job with a far more fluid sense of self.

As Arthur stuffs the card into his pocket and starts toward the main road to catch a taxi, the realization that Winters is not the woman he'd assumed the Forger to be strikes him as oddly fitting. It isn't that female Forgers are any less capable, but between the note cards and the bold move of stealing directly from Arthur's desk, Winters has always struck Arthur as someone who wanted for attention in a way that female Forgers tended not to. The sheer volume of rumors around his name is a testament to that. After all, what kind of government agent fostered a reputation besides one that wanted attention? That much, Arthur could understand.

Still, the acknowledgment of this difference is enough to reset Arthur's thinking. His mistake has been to make assumptions about his competitors. He'll soon have to make up for that.

Winters and his team scatter to the wind in the wake of a job well-done. Arthur tracks them down and keeps tabs on their movements as best he can. He reports back to his superiors and gradually, the team members are pulled back and drawn underground by their Dreamshare Program. The Forger and his tag-along, however, are the only ones that manage to escape Arthur's investigation for any length of time.

Arthur follows Winters' movements through his own abilities as well as the obnoxious little note cards that are left behind. Winters is good — very good — at what he does and isn't afraid to have Arthur following. When he's working, he's smooth, slipping in and out of places like a ghost and leaving behind only whispers of his presence. For all the breadth and boisterous attitude that shines through in the messages he leaves in his wake, however, Winters seems to be easily forgettable. When Arthur asks, people comment on his arrogance, his rudeness, but forget the details: his clothing, his face, and most importantly, his real name — if they knew it at all.

It makes Arthur pick apart what little he knows about the Forger. He's heard that Winters is the first man to try altering his appearance and the first to mold the environment into his own tool. That he can take materials from within a dream and turn them into something new is an amazing feat of memory and precision — one that could be easily used to strike into the field of architecture.

Instead, Winters spreads rumors about his own magnificence and waxes poetical about how Forgers are just Architects that don't get caught. Arthur hears stories, of course, of Forgers that try to extend their abilities to the dreams around them only to garner too much attention from projections and get killed for their trouble. Winters' history is no different, and everyone in the field knows what that means.

Even though they might wake up, fine and dandy, getting killed feels real every time, the phantom pains of wounds stick around, and there’s the mission to think of anyway.

Miffed at the reminder, Arthur fiddles with one of the little calling cards Winters has left behind. It's a business card with his code name across the front in curling script — handwritten, beautiful, and aggravating as all hell. The note cards are enough to make Arthur consider retaliation a sensible decision. It would do no good to his reputation for people to think that anyone so arrogant could slip under his radar.

He chases Winters down now, following his footsteps like a hunting dog. It helps that he knows that Winters' ultimate targets are the secrets of a politician in the UN. Arthur hasn’t yet been able to discern for himself a way to extract the right information, but he knows that he can't let Winters get to the Mark. It’s not easy to sniff out the path Winters has taken, and of the seven members of his team, only Winters seems to have known better than to use his own name.

It only takes one slip for Arthur to catch up, however, and in his youth and inexperience, Winters’ lingering associate has managed to make his final mistake.

He finds them in a crowded apartment complex just off the core gathering of towers that make up the city center of Mandalay, Myanmar. It's squat and unappealing, in shades of off-white and blue, and the inside reeks of mold and iron. There’s a man fixing his dirt bike in the middle of the hallway, arguing with his wife, who is leaning out of the doorway. They each give Arthur a suspicious look when he enters their floor from the stairwell and they glance toward one of the apartment doors without saying a word. The door has a hole in the front of it like someone’s tried to kick it in and the paint on the doorknob is flaking and rubbed away.

There's no telling how Winters managed to get the politician here, but if Extractors are willing to work here, then at least that means the people nearby seem to know when to look the other way. Arthur can hear the shouts and noise from the neighbors even after he closes the door, but the slight swell in noise does alert Winters’ partner to Arthur’s entrance. Moving fast, Arthur gets an arm around the man’s throat and twists him toward the ground to pin him. It takes a long moment before he slumps in Arthur’s arms, unconscious, but by then, Arthur’s not even looking at him anymore.

The PASIV device is sitting between two pairs of feet; it’s counting down from ten minutes already. Too late to beat Winters to the Mark, Arthur realizes; he could wait it out, but he’d rather not. He could prematurely end the dream, but that would just alert the target. He looks at the countdown (nine minutes, 47 seconds) and at the narrow tubes tightly wound around the Somnacin cartridge. Considering them, Arthur thinks on how he's always been taught that it’s impossible to follow someone into a dream once the administration of Somnacin has begun, but he’s never seen anyone try. Arthur grabs for the third IV and settles himself on the floor before falling down into what will surely be a very interesting dream.

  


According to his watch — a loose slip of chained timepiece around his wrist — Eames has been under for five minutes, fifteen seconds. He's been lucky so far. Even without another team mate to distract the projections, none of them had so much as glanced at him when he'd shed his body for a forge that's smaller, younger and more vulnerable. It's a point of pride that he can waltz through the dream in strappy heels, intentionally stumbling into the Mark's arms, without the threat of accidentally waking himself. From there, it's easy to insert himself into his target's personal space and to woo him as only a Forger can.

He’s got nothing but time down here — a commodity Eames is only beginning to appreciate in these last few weeks of hard running — and the Mark is all but salivating to tell him all his secrets. Next door, there's a vault with a big crank on the front and hundreds of little lock boxes with golden doors. Eames can see it from where he sits, leaning toward the Mark in his delicate little disguise of the evening. The Mark — politician, relentless businessman, suspected pedophile — has had his back to it this entire time; he can’t bear to look at it, Eames can tell, but he can’t stand not having it close either.

“Say,” he sighs into the Mark's ear, laughing lightly and girlishly. The Mark’s hands slide up Eames' ribs and under his breasts. “Let’s play a game. Tell me the first three numbers that come to your mind.”

The Mark chuckles low and lets his hands go low on Eames' body to give his ass cheeks a squeeze. “What kind of game is this, little girl?”

Eames giggles, chewing on his lower lip. “A fun game,” he promises. “You’ll like it.” He climbs into the Mark’s lap and wraps his arms around the man’s neck, shoulders hitching up shyly while he ducks his head. “You’ll like it a lot.”

“Alright then,” the Mark agrees happily, smacking Eames’s bottom before sliding his hand up his sundress. “Three. Ten. Forty-two.”

Grinning, Eames hides his face in the Mark’s neck and begins to make his explanation (three orgasms, ten kisses, forty-two minutes) when he sees a slick young man ghost up to the vault door, tap the three numbers into the keypad, and spin the crank.

“What the fuck,” Eames gapes, eyes going wide because he’d been quite certain that no one had come into the dream with him besides the Mark and that no projection was going to act with that level of decisiveness unless they were after Eames' blood. “No way.” The young man looks toward him at the sound of his voice and ducks into the vault with a smirk. “No _fucking_ way!”

The projections focus in on Eames as he throws himself from the Mark’s lap and darts toward the still open vault door. He’s running into the young man — Mr. Wright, he remembers when he at last recognizes the impassively haughty expression of the pest of an American airman who’s been on his trail since Beijing and who his partner had promised had been lost — elbow first, striking with all his strength and reaching for the photographs that had been taken from an open lock box. Wright grunts, but manages to sidestep the worst of it, twirling Eames around him and sending him flying past.

“What are you doing here?” Eames snaps as he molds one of his slippers into a pistol and points it at Wright.

“My job,” Wright replies, grinning as he raises his hands. He doesn’t look any older than twenty in the face, but his suits and slicked hair beg to be seen as someone older, successful, and worth respecting. “Surprised?” Eames scowls and Wright’s smiles broadens. “Me, too, but I can’t complain with the results.” His eyes flick over Eames’ form, brows raised at his sunflower blonde hair, his slender young girl body, and the kiss bruises on his mouth. “Nicely made.”

“Yeah?” Eames says, voice dripping with false pleasure. “I’m glad you like her so much. I’ll even let you give her a go after you hand over the papers, alright?”

Wright glances over his shoulder at the open vault door, at the Mark and his projections that are gathering and looking eerily focused and furious. “Thanks for the offer,” he says. “I think I’ll just look at them and go.”

Eames angles the nose of the gun to Wright’s leg, rather than his head. “I will shoot you and let you bleed out slow and painful. I said, hand them over.”

“And I said—”

Eames' first shot sounds like an explosion — louder than normal in the confined space of the vault — and Wright flinches. Beside him, a projection pitches forward, carried by the momentum of his lunge toward Eames. Eames snatches one photo from the American’s hands (the Mark and his daughter — good, but not enough — _what is his secret?_ ) and throws off the grip of another projection.

Wright retreats to the side and backwards — through the swarming projections, dropping papers and pictures as he finishes with them. Eames rips free of a woman with sharp fingernails and shoots the three men behind her. He starts toward Wright, but is pinned to the wall by attackers. His gun goes flying out of his hand and _oh_ — he bellows in furious frustration at having the information extracted right out from under him, at having done all the work only to have some American sweep in with a smile and claim all the goods... Then there’s the glint of a knife and the slide of it into his gut is exactly what Eames imagines it to be in reality — hot and painful and sharp all the way through his body. The noise he makes is all pain — the quick, whining inhale and the slow exhale that does nothing to alleviate.

His head jerks, looking through long blonde hair toward Wright, who is standing from where he knelt to pick up Eames’s gun. “I hate you,” Eames hisses — soft but no less vehement. The projection jerks the knife free and it punches right back in. Eames drops his head and stifles a whimper. Around them, the vault trembles in time with Eames’s stuttering heartbeat. “God, I hate you so much right now, you arsehole.”

The ceiling is the first to crumble; only Eames and Wright notice. Out of the corner of his eye, Eames can see the other man raise the gun and aim. His eyes close when the knife is pulled from him and the next moment is Eames opening his eyes to the sunken ceiling of an apartment in Myanmar. He shudders slow to alertness, square palms stroking over the planes of his very uninjured stomach just to make sure that the phantom pains really are phantom.

When he sits up, Mr. Wright is sitting across from him with a gun resting on one knee and Eames’s partner sprawled out on the concrete floor at his feet. He sighs, looking at the poor, young, eager-but-stupid bastard, and raises a brow at Wright, who shrugs. (The kid will survive then.)

They sit there for a moment observing each other. Wright’s clean — not uniformed and ironed clean; not even suit-clean in the khaki-polo combination that screams tourist, but with an air of freshness — and he looks distinctly unruffled. It irks Eames a little that Wright’s giving off the impression that trumping him is something he’s done easily, when Eames knows that’s not the case. (It’s not ego. He knows his abilities, and the risk Mr. Wright has taken is tremendous. It would be stupid to lie to himself in reality.) Still, it makes Eames scrub at the shadow of his beard; Wright’s hand doesn’t quite twitch around the gun.

“If you’re waiting for a ‘thank you,’ you’ll be here for a long time,” Eames grumbles.

Wright’s mouth does broaden at that, enough to reveal a pair of dimples. “Just want to make sure you won’t be following," he says and really, Eames thinks, he shouldn't be considering the man in possession of his gun to be any level of adorable.

The American is practically vibrating in the chair. As much as he holds himself still, Eames can tell it requires some energy. The shake is in his knees and along the line of his jaw and over his arms. He can’t really blame him for the reaction: no one has ever tried following Eames into a dream; Eames hadn’t even known it was possible. Watching him be so _thrilled_ at his accomplishment — despite his cavalier demeanor — meant that Eames could barely be mad at him for having done it at all. There was something absolutely fascinating about finding someone in the world that would even dare.

Still, Eames thinks that — if it weren’t for the gun; his gun, his beautiful, monster of a Glock 17 — he would be up, knocking Wright unconscious and hooking him up to the PASIV so that he could extract the information all over again. It would be difficult, but Eames knows the faces of a few commanders across the ocean... But there is the gun, after all.

“You have something I want,” Eames tells him plainly. “My not following would be an awful imposition.”

Wright turns the gun over, rubs his thumb up the side of it like a caress. (Eames does not scowl.) “I’ve already shot you once today, Winters,” he says and leaves the rest of it hanging ominously in the air between them. His eyes are bright though, impish in the face of their current situation.

Eames licks across the front of his teeth and does not look away, even when Wright stands and the Mark starts to stir into wakefulness. He keeps looking, tracking details with his mind as the other man turns his back on him.

“I’ll be keeping my eye on you!” Eames calls after him just as Wright opens the door because apparently he can't help himself to stay away from a challenge.

The grin Mr. Wright flashes back at him is all teeth — feral and pleased. “Maybe you should use both eyes.”

**OHIO, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 2007)**

Come a few weeks later, the excitement of having done something first has worn thin for Arthur. The admiration of others is nothing, and he ends up having to prove, over and over, that the things he puts in his reports aren’t lies, that anyone can jump into the middle of dreams, and that it wasn’t just a fluke. The frustration drags him down from his high, stifles it until the blaze is nothing but a burning ember in the shadows. It’s aggravating beyond belief that others can’t understand that, just because they have limits, someone else might not be so hindered by that lack of ingenuity. The only thing that tides him over is his memory of Winters’ face when Arthur had departed — a little fierce, but exhilarated at having found a competitor. That, at least, had been an honest reaction to Arthur's skill as a dreamer.

In the time he’s had to spare (which isn’t much, frankly, but Arthur has always been good at time management and even better at research), he’s dug up little more on Winters. There’s no real name attached to any of Winters’ paperwork; the code name is the only thing that’s stamped at the top of all the official paperwork Arthur can find. There’s no picture, no fingerprints, no birth records, nothing at all that might serve as a connection between the man Arthur had met in the thick humidity of Myanmar and his beginnings. It's as if Winters came off the streets and joined the European Dreamshare Program as a fully formed human being, but Arthur knows there has to be a lead somewhere, so he expands his horizons.

Gentle inquiries into the field about Winters gathers him only rumors about his brilliance. A great deal of it is things Arthur has already heard: Winters is cocky; Winters is the best; Winters is as professional as they come. A scattering of opinions that add up to nothing until he ends up on the phone with an Englishman named Worth, who laughs heartily when he hears Winters’ name.

“Oh, he’s a great Forger alright,” says Worth with the ease of a man that likes being heard. “Never seen a man shift so fast in my life. Last I saw, he was on his way to Cambodia on orders from the Lady Upstairs, but rumor has it, he’s actually in America doing a spot of reconnaissance for some future, international project.”

Arthur asks a few questions here and there, but mostly lets Worth talk. He asks if Winters goes by any other name and gets: “There’s Winnie, of course,” but Worth fumbles immediately. “Actually, I can’t say he’s gone by any other name than that.”

“What about a real name?” Arthur urges.

Worth hums. “No,” he draws out. “If he did, it was before my time.”

When Arthur hangs up the phone an hour later, he’s got a handful of notes on where Winters has been been before and when. He’s got a phone number, an email address, and a post office box in Hampshire. The email he sends gets returned as undeliverable and the post box is registered under an “A. C. Doyle” with no physical address attached. Arthur leaves the phone number uncalled, but he tacks it to the cloth wall of his cubicle above his computer and tries not to look at it. He’ll find Winters another way, he tells himself; mostly because he wonders, if he does call, what would he even say?

Two months pass and Myanmar is still a bright spot in Arthur’s past. He continues to receive orders with **MR. WRIGHT** coded at the top and the folder with information on Winters sits in his briefcase, not getting any thicker for all that Arthur keeps looking. In fact, the deeper he digs, the more Arthur seems to hit road blocks; he’s denied access to files left, right and center. Frustration, when he allows himself to notice it, festers like a burn inside his chest.

“Mr. Wright?”

Arthur looks up to a bouquet of yellow, red and white blossoms and a frazzled-looking man in a jumper uniform. “...Yes?” he ventures.

“For you,” declares the deliverer with a flourish, depositing the flowers — glass vase, embossed note card and all — right on Arthur’s desk before leaving in what could only be described as a weary flounce.

The flowers are pretty, or at least Arthur can tell that they’d intended to be pretty but had become rather wilted in the course of their transit. There are a few broken stems here and there, and the petals are bruised from where security had moved them while searching for anthrax or guns or poison darts or _whatever_ , which Arthur could totally stand beside in the name of safety if maybe they had thought to wonder if Arthur was allergic. He wasn’t, but the point still stood that they should have called his desk when the delivery had come instead of letting the man through with his flowers and his note and his flourish and make Arthur deal with the sudden and intense interest of everyone in his general vicinity.

“What are _those_?” hisses the man across the isle from him. He’s leaning out of his cubicle in an effort to get a better view of the flowers. “Are they from a girlfriend?”

“Please,” cuts in another voice — female this time. “Mr. Wright doesn’t have time for a girlfriend.”

Arthur would be irritated, but she is right. “I don’t know who the flowers are from,” he admits and plucks the note card from its plastic fork. There’s still dust on the card from where security had further deigned to search for fingerprints. He can feel everyone leaning over to watch him read.

 _Found you_ , the card says. It’s signed with a curling, loopy, highly feminine swirl: _Winnie~._

“ _Christ_ ,” Arthur curses, alarm slicing through him, and proceeds to ensure that the flowers are disposed of properly.

He tucks the note card in his pocket and scoops up the vase with one hand. When one of the women near his cubicle watches him head toward the kitchenette area at the end of the room, he hears her flutter behind him and coo with hearts in her eyes: Oh my, is Mr. Wright going to water them? It’s with a dark sense of satisfaction that he listens for her strangled surprised as he opens the chute for the incinerator next to the sink and drops the flowers — vase, plastic fork and all — inside.

He keeps the note though.

“So...” drawls the man stationed in the cubicle across from Arthur’s. “Not a girlfriend.”

Despite his frequent calls to security for them to put the gifts to a halt, Arthur starts receiving them every week without fail. They’re always a bit battered by the time they reach him and are always accompanied by a note. _Better luck next time_ , says one, after Arthur’s spent a week going through legitimate channels to get to Winters’ background information, trying to tie events to the dates that Worth had given him. It comes with box of chocolates — melted and somewhat crushed, apologetically spilling their coconut contents into their individual cups — and Arthur picks at them for a little while with his fingers before deciding that these too will suffer incineration. (The forlorn expression of the lady that sits nearest him is comical; she huffs as he passes, clearly disappointed that yet another gift is being dismissed.)

He gets a string of compact discs full of music, of all different types — classical full of piano and guitar, raunchy jazz and grating screamo, plucky folk and boisterous Broadway tunes, top forties and classic rock, alternative pop and country swing — and the notes that come with it are jaunty, teasingly asking how his search is going. There’s Le Petit Prince with a French quote about roses in Winnie’s flirtatious hand, and a smooth bottle of Puerto Rican rum that tastes like oak and tropical fruit with a request for Arthur to simply _Enjoy~_. A whole carton of clove cigarettes arrives with a companion that reads, _Nasty habit, but these smell wonderful_. A small sack of whole bean coffee that smells rich and dark and powerful arrives with a stone-carved mug, and he gets tickets to a small theatre near his office that he doesn’t have the time to use — not that he would have. He keeps the coffee and the cigarettes, but the theatre tickets get forked off to one of his coworkers, who grudgingly accepts them after giving him a searching look when he explains that he doesn’t go to the theatre and someone might as well use them.

It’s galling to know that as secret as he is — as infolded as his history is behind **TOP SECRET** stamps and security clearance — he is still being tailed. Winters must be fast on his feet and in his mind to follow Arthur with such steady precision and discover each of his moves as soon as he’s made them. It would be exciting to have such a capable opponent in the field if only Arthur didn’t feel so hunted, if he didn’t suspect that every rooftop, every door, every window hid a Forger, whose intentions, baffling at first, become clear once Arthur thinks about it.

_I want to know you._

The sentiment is written in every note card Arthur has sitting at home. Not literally, of course, but in the way Winters prods at him, discovering what effects he can have on an American agent. It’s in the way the gifts start out general but become more focused as time goes on. It’s in how they stop coming to the office, worse for the wear, and start showing up in pristine condition to the hotel at which Arthur is staying, at his apartment in L.A or, more uneasily, his home in Columbus. It’s in the handwriting, too — in Winnie’s open and beautiful script, with flirtatious intent within every loop, increasingly fluctuating into Winter’s natural penmanship: still open and beautiful but with sharper lines and tighter, smaller letters that lick at the margins.

When Arthur reaches the end of his rope when it comes to connections, he stops looking for Winters altogether. The gifts cease. The notes fail to turn up. For a whole month, Arthur looks up whenever someone passes, expecting a hassled-looking courier to deposit something on the corner of his desk. He drives home, fingers tight around the steering wheel, and steels himself before going to the front door because he expects the brown box of a delivery or a slip of paper apologizing for having missed him.

For a whole month, Arthur hears nothing from Winters, and he’s left wondering, desperately, what the other agent might be up to — if the Forger is dead and someone out there has prevented the two of them from having a proper rematch. The phone number he’s never called moves from the wall of his cubicle to his wallet, folded and tucked behind his ID badge, and it’s only at the end of the month that he considers calling it. He taps it out on the number pad of his cell a dozen times one evening and half a dozen more the next day, but never actually makes the call because what if that’s what Winters is driving him toward? Arthur can’t know for sure the ultimate motives of a man he barely knows and maybe Winters will answer the phone, laughing and purring, “ _Got you, Mr. Wright_ ,” into the receiver.

(The bottle of finely made rum sitting on his dining table is the last gift he'd received from Winters. It's down to three-quarters already. Arthur keeps it next to a box of neatly ordered white cards and a sharpie. All he wants to do is write a name across the front of it that’s final and real, but he can’t and now may never and maybe calling will be _worth it_.)

Frustrated at how often his fingers itch to drag out the scant information he has on Winters, to see if maybe he’s missed something that might allow him to check up on the man now, Arthur lets himself get assigned to a mission in Düsseldorf, Germany with a team that is not up to his usual standards. He shuffles through the arrangements halfheartedly, ignoring how their Architect seems too twitchy and their Chemist, too timid, and can’t stop pouring his mind over why Winters might have stopped the gifts at all.

Then, just as Arthur’s about to resign himself to the idea of never knowing what’s happened to Winters in the end, the flight attendant scanning his plane ticket abruptly turns a winning smile at him and informs him that he’s been upgraded to first class seats instead of his usual coach. ("Welcome aboard American Airlines, Mr. Wright.") There’s no note to confirm his suspicions, but all the same, Arthur turns to look over his shoulder as he starts toward the plane, hoping that he’ll see evidence of Winters’ hand in this — but there’s nothing, _nothing_. Just tourists and businessmen and college students and not a single Forger in sight.

After four weeks of absolute silence, the message Arthur gets is this:

_I’ve still got my eye on you, Mr. Wright._

He should feel threatened — _he should_ — and there’s nothing about this situation that says he can be okay with Winters shadowing his every move. Winters is a foreign Extractor — from an allied country, yes, but not one that’s always on America’s side. He has every reason to hold a grudge against Arthur, finds out information far too quickly and has learned Arthur’s tastes far too easily. But no, instead of wariness, Arthur feels relief.

  


**DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY (APRIL 2008)**

The mission is a wreck. Arthur is as focused and meticulous as ever, but things just never seem to go the way he needs. It’s not a simple assignment — none of the ones that land on Arthur’s desk are — but relatively, convincing three embassy-bombing terrorists to reveal the identity and location of their ring leader should be a cake walk. It’s not the extraction that’s the problem, ultimately; it’s everything else.

Three terrorists turn into five and Arthur ends up having to call in for a second PASIV because the first burns through their stores of Somnacin faster than he feels is normal. The Chemist suggests that it just needs recalibrating. Arthur just shrugs, noting that he doesn’t feel any more sluggish than he normally does after a dream, that he can startle out of the dream as easily as he ever has. It’s better to be safe than sorry, though. So, he sends the PASIV back to America with the appropriate paperwork anyway and goes back to his hotel room in a tired haze.

He drops his briefcase next to the bed and pulls back the covers. He flicks on the television so he can have some background noise and starts undressing in a weary daze, so so ready to just shower and dive into a dreamless sleep. He splashes water on his face and scrubs wet hands through his short hair before reaching for a hand towel. He bets that he looks haggard in the mirror—

_Your resources are looking low these days, Mr. Wright. I hope you enjoyed your flight._

Arthur rips the note from the mirror, suddenly wide awake. It’s the same kind of note card as before — thick white card stock, textured, with an embossed trim — with Winters’ tight cursive scrawled across it. It’s rough between his fingers — familiar, comforting. He flips the card over, expecting the back to be blank like its predecessors.

Instead, there’s a fingerprint.

When Arthur manages to partition out an hour of free time the next day, he gets the print scanned. His leg is jumping under his palm and his fingers are helplessly rubbing against each other — working off excess energy as the computer system runs the print through the remote database. He wants it to pull up Winters’ face, wants to see a file attached to the features he remembers. Instead, the file the fingerprint matches belongs to his Architect.

There are documents upon documents attached to the Architect's file that hadn't been there the first time Arthur had looked him up. It's just a series of monetary exchanges and an itemization of each purchase. The names of the purchasers dead end immediately — probably altogether false — but it's the items that are concerning. Small amounts of the Somnacin drug, weapons, PASIV devices, sedatives, and a string of expenditures for flights before each big sale. Suspicions helplessly build up, but it's not anything that Arthur has the authority to act on. He ends up contacting his commander and brings the file to their attention, asking for advisement on the actions he should take from here.

The answer comes to him that afternoon in a little, plain text adjustment of his current orders. The Architect gets taken into custody and sent back to America for a trial. From then on Arthur's got the mission well in hand and a note card burning a hole in his breast pocket. He flies back to America with a letter of commendation from higher up for catching the officer's illegal actions, and even though he can't refuse it, it doesn't really belong to him. How long would that Architect have continued selling military property if Winters hadn't pointed him in the right direction?

When he gets home, Arthur takes out Winters' note card and lays it flat on his dining table — next to the box of its brothers, a sharpie, a dusty bottle of rum, and his cell phone. He's tired, he realizes as he pulls out his wallet and rummages until he finds the slip of paper folded behind his badge. The number scrawled on it has been rubbed to fading — softened with friction and time. Arthur smooths down the paper's folds against the table and pins the edges down with his fingers while he dials the number on his phone.

He wants to say: _Thank you — for helping me catch a criminal._

But that isn’t all encompassing. Yes, he’s glad for that. It will go in his file and how he handled it will probably factor into his next promotion, but it ignores all the other little things that led up to a note card in his hotel room.

He wants to say: _I’d like us to work together sometime._

Because he knows now how Winters works — carefully finding the edges of a person, digging his nails in and prying them open little by little until they’ve exposed everything — and he can’t help but be curious if Winters expands that method to everything else now that he’s been such an unexpected aid.

He wants to say—

Arthur jumps when his phone chirps; the number he'd dialed is wiped clean to announce an unknown number. The caller goes straight to voicemail without giving Arthur the chance to answer. A sweet jingle announces a left message a few minutes later, and Arthur calls to listen to it wearily, still considering what he might say if he calls Winters and hoping that he won’t hear a summons from his commander.

“Dear Mr. Wright.”

It’s not his commander.

“Dear Mr. Wright,” says Winters. “Welcome home. I hear you’ve returned safely and that you’ve caught an Architect who's behaved rather poorly. Congratulations.” Winters takes a quiet breath, like he’s giving his next words some considerable thought. “I just thought you should know that there’s been some interesting talk lately — maybe you’ve heard — about our dreamshare programs becoming a little more... shall we say... friendly. If and when this happens...”

Winters trails off — hesitating, Arthur thinks, to continue.

Then Winters’ chuckle melts, warmly, into Arthur’s ear. “Keep up the good work, Mr. Wright,” he says, “and watch your back.”

(Arthur wants to say: _I want to know you._ )

  
[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595816) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595828) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595830) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595853) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595816)


	9. Chrono 2

**LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2009)**

Arthur is among a select grouping of dreamers that have been sent to London under the premise of advancing the European Dreamshare Program. It’s said that the program is younger than Project Somnacin, but there’s no official date of its beginning that Arthur can find. As far as he can tell, though, the program seems to have sprung up, fully formed, out of a collection of different studies conducted by MI6’s academic subsidiaries. Nonetheless, they’re here as a gesture of alliance, to show that America cares as much for its own skills as it does for the skills of the countries that stand beside it.

He considers himself loyal to his country — patriotic in the vague sense that he should be — but if he’s honest with himself, Arthur is much more interested in who he might meet when the plane lands.

Winters. The only Forger he knows that blurs the lines between genders and age. The only one who hasn’t sat back once Arthur has trumped him. The only one who has ever issued a challenge. The only one whose reputation has actually become stronger after a loss, instead of the other way around.

The anticipation of seeing Winters’ face — the slight leer under the guise of offense — itches under Arthur’s skin. His stride off their plane is so forceful that he actually shoves another of the officers out of the way in his eagerness.

On the tarmac, the only ones there to greet them is an older woman and her entourage. The line of her mouth is the most severe Arthur’s ever seen on a woman, and though her escorts are all at least a head taller than her, she shows no sign of being cowed or even really noticing their presence. Even the sweeping gaze she rolls over the group of Americans before her cuts like a knife, seeming to go straight to the heart of them and opening them up for assessment. The way her eyes flick skyward — only fleetingly, not so much asking the Lord for patience but rather setting the blame of her current situation squarely at His feet — and back down again to match her tight smile is just short of insulting.

“You may call me M,” she introduces herself with a curt tone and a firm handshake with the officer in charge. “I’ll be in charge of the affairs between our two programs. For the duration of your time here, you will be stationed with a team of your choosing. There will be an orientation meeting this afternoon during which you will meet potential teammates. I expect promptness and efficiency from every one of you. Are we clear?”

The officer in charge — an older man than Arthur, who was known only by his humorous title: Colonel Mustard — nods briskly. “Ma'am, crystal.”

M, now that the brunt force of her introduction is over with, is more congenial. “Moneypenny,” she gestures to the tall, youthfully beautiful woman next to her. “If you could see that their luggage is taken care of in the meantime?” Moneypenny scoots quickly to do just that. M turns on her heel, graceful and precise. “Follow me.”

  


The orientation itself nearly bores Arthur to tears. Everyone is issued badges with electronic swipes that will allow them into certain buildings and rooms and to check out PASIV devices for no longer than six hours at a time. All the Americans are sitting at the front of the narrow room and Arthur is keenly aware of the fifty-something dreamers from all across Europe sitting behind him. He risks a glance over his shoulder while a presenter is talking about international cooperation and team work.

Military though they may all be, none of them are truly in uniform. Crisp, yes, and still with the standardized cuts and clean-shaven faces, but their clothing is conservatively civilian all the way: khaki pants with ironed lines, long sleeved shirts and wind jackets, and buffed brown loafers. Comfortable clothing that won’t make dreaming difficult.

It’s because Arthur’s looking over his shoulder that he sees a man sneak in the rear entrance and perch himself along the back wall of the conference room, unobtrusively waving an apologetic hand to M, who is giving him a stern look. He’s broad; his shoulders hunch together when he crosses his arms and his hair is finely tousled out of his eyes in a way that is not entirely unappealing. His arms, like his shoulders, are big with a hint of ink showing through the white shirt, and Arthur finds they’re faintly familiar. That’s when the man scans the audience and catches Arthur looking. It’s only when he grins — shark sharp and full of pride — that Arthur recognizes him:

Winters.

The thrill that slides up Arthur’s spine, hot and electric, is completely warranted.

Arthur turns back to the presentation with impending satisfaction purring through him. The presenter finishes up with something hopeful and then dismisses them for a light lunch, during which the dreamers will mingle and talk shop and ultimately decide on teams. Arthur stands, slips past everyone to get to Winters and only pulls short when he sees that the other man’s already been cornered.

Arthur’s not the only one after him, it seems. That’s good, he thinks. It would be disappointing if he’d been the only one to recognize Winters’ skill, if seizing such a bright flame wasn’t a challenge.

“We make a good team, you and I,” says the second man to Winters. His voice is distantly recognizable to Arthur. “Why don’t we show these upstarts what we’re capable of?”

“Worth,” Winters starts coolly. His arms are still crossed, unfolding only to gesticulate. He’s shifting so that his weight is tilted away from Worth, so that there’s clear, definitive space between them. “I’m flattered, truly. But M says that this venture is about—”

“M doesn’t know anything about dreaming,” Worth cuts in, apparently ignorant of the way Winters' face shutters at the dismissal. “She’s a bureaucrat, nothing more. As powerful as she is, she can’t understand the extent of what we do here. It’s time we showed her that.”

“I agree.” Arthur chooses then to step in, coming in behind Winters’ shoulder. “Which is why I think Winters has decided to work only with the best.”

Worth is a very handsome sort of man, Arthur decides, with a heavily masculine jaw softened by a generous mouth and dark, liquid eyes. He looks the sort that’s used to getting what he wants, whenever he wants it — an Extractor, then. One who gestures with broad palms and thick, blunt fingers. Handsome, Arthur reiterates to himself, but also unsavory. Arthur can’t imagine he’s very good at his job at all.

It’s an observation that only solidifies when Worth shifts to take in Arthur’s presence, leaning in with a smile that’s an uneven mixture of condescending and placating. “You must be one of the Americans. Sorry to say I don’t recognize you.”

Arthur doesn’t bother with a reply. He’s already managed to identify Worth as the recklessly divulgent Englishman that had pointed him in Winters’ direction after Myanmar. His additional observations haven’t enamored him. He touches Winters on the arm and waits for him to turn before saying, “I’m picking you, Winters. I want you on my team.”

Winters’ reaction is devoid of surprise and all pleasure. Genuine, Arthur hopes, but it’s hard to say with a Forger. “Why, Mr. Wright,” he says with sly eyes. “Like I could turn down a man of your caliber. After all, there’s so much to make up for after Myanmar.”

“ _You’re_ Mr. Wright?” says Worth off to the side, completely ruining the moment. “You can’t be over twenty!”

“You should get a better Point Man, Mr. Worth,” Arthur tells him, not even hiding the dismissive tone in his voice. “Your research is lacking.”

Winters follows without argument when Arthur pulls at his elbow, and Arthur is glad to hear Worth's outraged sputtering behind him to make him feel better about how nervous he feels walking beside the man who has become his rival, his challenger... easily the most fascinating and terrifying person of which Arthur can think.

"Staking your claim early, Mr. Wright?" Winters asks. "I'm not sure if I should be flattered or afraid."

"I can't afford to let someone who's been able to spy on me for the last year be on an opposing team," Arthur corrects. Even though it's a big fat lie, it's got the right kind of logic to it. The truth is that he doesn't want to let Winters out of his sight now that he has him.

Winters laughs like Arthur's said the most charming thing and really, how did anyone forget the face of a man with this level of charisma? While Arthur's trying to piece together how Winters could possibly set aside such a strong personality without it bleeding through every Forge, Winters switches gears seamlessly.

"I assume that you already have our teammates chosen," he says, turning so that he's kind of in Arthur's path. Arthur takes a couple more steps before he actually stops, and they end up circling each other for those steps. "But if you don't," Winters continues, "I can name some."

"Thanks," Arthur replies and is pleasantly surprised to feel able to accept the offer at face value, "but I already have some people in mind." He reaches out and pushes Winters back with his fingertips. "Do you know how to get in touch with me after?"

"Yes," Winters answers.

"Of course." — when has Winters ever not known exactly how to contact Arthur, wherever he is — "After orientation today, then. I'll arrange the rest."

Arthur spends the rest of lunch chatting up dreamers, confirming the teammates he’d already decided on during the flight over. People flock to him, hoping to snag a position on his team. Arthur coolly tells them all that he has his team already, that he’s sorry, but another time, perhaps. It won’t happen, of course. The people he’s chosen have all been in the business for a while — not so short a work history as to be blinded by the long list of accomplishments Arthur brings with him, nor so long as to have become disenchanted with him. As much as he dislikes being fawned over (because it brings with it so many different problems) there’s value to be found in how much easier it is for Arthur to teach them, easier still when they've been around long enough to recognize that what Arthur brings to the table is worth their time.

Winters is not with him, not really, but Arthur is conscious of him always being somewhere in the vicinity, a unmistakable presence that burns between his shoulder blades. They’re never in the same conversations, yet Arthur can’t help but feel like Winters is glued to his hip, changing groups always just before or just after Arthur has decided to move on.

They dance around each other, never catching the other’s eye, not quite touching when they pass, and by the time Arthur has arranged his team at the end of the hour, he feels warm under the collar. The punch doesn’t help with that, so he undoes the first button at his throat. It really doesn’t help that Winters’ visage appears through the crowd at the very moment the button is loose.

“You work very quickly for a man of your age, Wright,” comes the comment from beside Arthur’s shoulder. It’s M. She’s looking wistfully at Winters. “Though it helps that Worth is a bit of a bastard.”

His response is noncommittal for the most part. “Tomorrow, we start teaching.”

“Yes,” M replies and seems to laugh a little to herself. “Winters will give you a run for your money, I’m sure. So will Worth, for that matter,” she warns.

“I look forward to it,” Arthur tells her and isn’t surprised in the least at how honest he sounds.

He can’t wait to see what Winters can really do when given full rein. He wonders how quickly he can forge, how much work he has to put into it and how much stress it takes before Winters loses control completely. (On the last one, he suspects a great deal, remembering a narrow glinting blade cutting through a young girl’s body and her grey-grey eyes looking at him while her blood spilled out and the world trembled.) Despite all the rumors he’s heard about the other agent — or perhaps because of them — Arthur has been left with an insatiable curiosity this last year and a half. Having the opportunity to go toe-to-toe directly with Winters — every day for the next six months — is a gift he isn’t about to hand back.

M turns to look at him fully and whatever she finds when she looks at him must amuse her greatly because her mouth has twisted together to hide a smile. “Well, good luck,” she tells him, eyes fairly sparkling with mischief. “You may need it sooner than you think.”

Arthur looks after her when she abandons him with those words. The dreamers part for her like water around a stone as she makes her way directly to Winters’ side. She touches his shoulder and he bends to her immediately, listening as she tells him some secret into his ear. When the Forger glances up to look at him, Arthur looks away, conscious of having been watching, so he misses the way Winters’ expression turns focused, how his gaze goes from appreciative to shrewd.

  


“Alright,” Arthur begins, unlatching the silver case on the table. “I’m going to set up the PASIV for fifteen minutes. Show me what you’ve got.”

“ _Now_?” demands the startled Architect with cap of curls all around her head. “You haven’t even told me what you want me to build.”

“I haven’t,” Arthur agrees. “Build anything you want, do anything you want. I’ll be the subject for this dream. You guys are going to keep me from killing you.”

The Architect, Mallorie, gapes for a few more seconds, then her mouth thins with resolve. Beside her, Winters looks fairly bored, though he’s the first to grab the IV that Arthur is holding out. He nudges the man next to him, a fellow Point Man named Rhodey, and quips: “Ten says he never finds me.”

Rhodey sighs wearily and settles himself comfortably in one of the dreaming beds as he puts in an IV lead. “No bet.”

Arthur lifts his chin. Winters responds in kind and his smile is slow like molasses, saturated with impertinence, when Arthur says: “You’re on.”

He’s got a tightness around his spine now that won’t go away. This is exactly the feeling Arthur had hoped for: that thrill of the hunt, that excitement brought on by grey-grey eyes that don’t back down and don’t give up, the heavy and all-consuming sensation of being tracked by someone who is just as fast, just as clever. _Bring it on; show me everything you’ve got._

Eagerly, Arthur plunges the Somnacin trigger and tips himself back onto his dreaming bed. He tries not to think about it, to let the Somnacin flow over him like water, but for a while there, all Arthur sees is Winters with his cheeky grin going right up to his eyes before he’s sinking into the warm, red space of a diner in the middle of town.

“Is there anything I can get for you, sugar?” asks the waitress as her manicured nails tap against the scratched plastic of the table top. Her name tag is overlarge — pinned like a white business card to the top of her breast pocket. “Coffee, maybe?” Her bubble gum pops between her lips and she pushes bright blonde hair over her shoulder. “It looks like your flight took a toll on you.”

“Sure,” Arthur tells her — anything to send her on her way — scanning the diner before deciding that he should explore. “Thanks.”

The waitress smiles in such a way that says she knows he’s going to be on his way as soon as she turns her back. No surprise, since she’s his projection, and Arthur dismisses it as he stands. After she turns to grab a chipped china cup and the coffee pot, she glances back at him and watches blandly as Arthur exits the diner.

The world Mallorie has built is perfect. The diner melts into a row of homes that look alarmingly similar without being identical — the kind of homes Arthur sees in closed communities with gates at the entrance and security for hire — and beyond those are towering spiral buildings that twist up into white clouds. He likes it here. It’s orderly, precise and peaceful, and expectations, while unspoken, are understood. The thing is that Arthur can’t quite see how this can become the maze it needs to be.

The space is too open.

An odd sense of danger — unusual in a setting like this but as certain as the pull of a trigger — teases at the back of his mind. He turns in the direction of it and everyone turns to look with him. He doesn’t see the projections swarm the source of the danger, but his alarm passes, his nerves stop being on edge and a part of him knows that the Point Man (Rhodey) has just been eliminated.

What a shame, Arthur thinks sadly. He’d expected him to last longer.

There are several others to expect. The Architect he’ll do his best to find last, though it’s hard to ignore shifts in the environment and harder still to keep his subconscious under control. There’s also the Extractor — O’Neill; young but suave already, with an attitude that seems beyond his years. Arthur can afford to find him next. There are two Forgers. One is Scarbrough — an impish young man that he has hopes for but no illusions about his lack of experience, despite the good reviews of his work — and the other, of course, is Winters.

Arthur turns between two houses and their brick fades into glass and smooth, polished wood panelling of a door. The bar behind it is a beautiful piece of architecture, and his mind itches when he feels the landscape behind him shifting, changing... becoming malleable under the Architect’s guidance. Mallorie is testing him, he feels, but killing her would only end the dream faster.

“Stop it,” he hisses out of the corner of his mouth — and there she is, poised in the doorway Arthur’s just stepped through and it’s a street behind her instead of an unsuspecting neighborhood. Mallorie sags, disappointed at having been caught but looking as if she’d expected it, and drops into a bar stool beside him without a word.

The bartender puts a cup of coffee in front of Arthur in a chipped china cup and carries on washing glasses and making nameless, identical drinks for everyone else at the bar. Arthur watches him suspiciously, remembering his order from the diner, but the barkeep doesn’t look up, except when the door to the bar opens and in steps Winters.

Arthur flips back the side of his coat, thumbing the holster against his ribs, and watches as Winters saunters up to him. His walk is lazy — too much hip and staggering confidence — and his expression as he leans against the bar near Arthur is on the verge of a yawn. When Winters says, “So when are we going to really do something fun,” in a tone that isn’t at all interested, Arthur pauses.

“Well?” urges Mallorie, confused by Arthur’s hesitance. “Don’t you have a bet to win, Mr. Wright?”

That he does, but something isn't quite right. He’s not sure whether it’s the frank (and a little hostile) boredom sloughing off Winters’ body in waves or how the man doesn’t even seem to be invading Arthur’s personal space — or even, the way all the projections (bartender included, for all that Arthur had suspected him) have started to peer warily at Winters as they walk past him. It’s a combination of all those things, but mostly has to do with how Winters, when he’d caught Arthur’s eye from across the room, hadn’t even cracked a smile.

“Oh,” Arthur says when the realization hits him and this time draws his gun without hesitation.

It’s a good forge, he supposes, but it depends on who’s supposed to be fooled. Given enough time, maybe the Forger would get it right next time. “Winters” watches Arthur raise his Glock with a detached sort of interest, and Arthur isn’t fooled at all.

“See you later, Scarbrough,” says Arthur cheerily and is pleased by his shocked expression before he pulls the trigger.

The young man at the far table doesn’t flinch when Scarbrough falls to the ground, and he doesn’t watch when the bartender deigns to drag the fresh body out of the bar, muttering about keeping the place clean for customers. Arthur only really notices him because a slim young girl in jeans and a shirt with a plunging neckline perkily peeks her way into the bar and takes a seat across from him.

Arthur can usually tell when he’s been extracted on. It feels like a distraction or deja vu — a part of his mind being gently and quietly fished through for bits of information — the sensation that he should’ve paid attention to something elsewhere. But as the young man — O’Neill — starts talking with the girl, Arthur feels none of those things. The girl hedges at his questions, never really answering as she blows a bubble with her bright pink gum, but she smiles brightly and eagerly like she wants nothing more than to tell O’Neill everything he wants to know.

“If you could keep a secret anywhere in the world—” starts O’Neill and the girl flutters her lashes thoughtfully and touches her fingertips to her very full mouth.

Arthur, against his own instincts, looks to the safe behind the bar. The Extractor sees it.

O’Neill wraps a lock of her fire-red hair around his fingers and brings it to his mouth as he asks her: “What are your favorite numbers, beautiful?”

The girl smiles and it’s shy and sharp and Arthur is about to shoot O’Neill right here, right now, with the end of the dream booming around his head, when she looks up at him—

Grey-grey eyes and her pretty, heavy-lipped mouth turning over the numbers: “Three. Ten. Forty-two.”

The realization jolts him right back to Myanmar for all of a second before he’s sitting up to Winters’ rich laughter and the impersonal, tan walls of the workshop. Mallorie is snarking at Arthur already as she tidies up the PASIV, saying that this is exactly why they don’t have Architects in dreams, that that’s why Architects just build in the real world without actually taking the plunge. Meanwhile, Rhodey is just behind her with bright eyes, looking like he wants to know how Arthur got such _wonderfully violent projections._

Off to the side, Scarbrough looks just short of livid while Winters casts him a shark grin and asks, laughing still: “Were you hoping to make him think that I’d lost? What an idea!”

After Scarbrough shrugs him off, saying that it was worth a shot, O’Neill leaps on Winters, saying: “You could’ve told me I was extracting on you instead of a projection.”

To which Winters replies: “Isn’t it your responsibility to tell the difference?”

When O’Neill scoffs, sulking a little about Forgers who are too damn good, Winters leans back on his elbows on his dreaming bed — stretched out and languid — and looks to Arthur with dancing eyes. “Another go, then, Mr. Wright? Or have you seen all you need to?”

Not nearly enough, Arthur thinks fiercely as numbers thrum through his mind — _three, ten, forty-two_. He hasn’t seen nearly enough.

**LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2009)**

Arthur spends the next couple months turning a mostly-reasonable group of dreamers into a real team with which he can work. It takes a few tries and a few arguments, but Winters grudgingly gives pointers to Scarbrough on his Forging. Meanwhile, Arthur does practice runs with Rhodey, trying to get the other Point Man's skill up high enough that he won't be ripped apart by Arthur's projections in under a minute. Mallorie builds courses to challenge them and O'Neill ends up lumped in with the Forgers to practice his extractions on them.

After a few more dream runs, Arthur has them looking through files on volunteers that have been provided for teams to practice on — people of various mental skills, usually other dreamers, that have been given a fake secret to keep. Together, they decide on a man who’s been given a high-difficulty rating, arrange for a meeting at the end of the week, and set about planning an appropriate dream.

It’s both easier and harder having things arranged like this. On the one hand, Arthur doesn’t have to figure out how they’re going to corner their Mark, who is a Commander from the base at which they're stationed. Here, the Mark will waltz through the door, pleasant as anything, before doing his best to keep from blurting out everything he knows. On the other hand, this is a team he isn’t certain about working with and Winters is determined to make the job more and more intricate.

O'Neill has brought up the idea of using someone who's in a position of authority over their Mark, Commander Bartlett, and using that authority to put him at ease about speaking about his secrets. It's a simple idea and thus, not one that Arthur would have presented himself. It's one that he can support, however, and elaborate on until it becomes something truly worthwhile.

The problem comes when Scarbrough brings up M. "She's in charge of basically everyone," he says. "If there's anyone that everyone defers to, it's the Lady Upstairs. It'd be easy to get one of us to forge her."

Winters frowns at the thumb that Scarbrough waggles between the two of them as he speaks and brushes his hands over the top of his thighs. The table next to him has Commander Bartlett's file on it — open and with several pages turned. Winters taps at a the paragraph laying out Bartlett's history: "Bartlett works closely with M. He's in charge of new dreamers when they're recruited into the Program."

Brows rising, O'Neill takes a step forward. "Yeah, _and_...?"

" _And_ ," Winters finishes pointedly, standing to meet the Extractor's challenge, "that means he's on with her pretty well. I don't know about Scarbrough, but I don't fancy trying to pull off a Forgery of a woman whose socio-normative behavior with Bartlett is largely supposition."

"We don't need it to be perfect," Arthur cuts in, trying to salvage O'Neill's thinking for him.

"Forgeries are never _perfect_ , Mr. Wright." Winters' attention slices toward him immediately. "But we have neither the time nor the authority to investigate any deeper than the file they've given us. The point I was trying to make is that we can't have Bartlett see M, expect her to greet him a certain way and get something different."

Mallorie’s hand moves more slowly as she sketches out designs for the dream — listening, clearly, as Winters digs in his heels about anyone forging M and Arthur lays out in precise detail all the reasons why it would be the simplest way to get Commander Bartlett’s subconscious to trust O’Neill with his secret. Arthur has Rhodey on his side easily enough since Point Men by nature like clean and clear cut plans, but Winters doesn’t pay attention to his agreeing nods.

“Oh, stuff it,” Winters snaps when Rhodey is about to jump in with an argument. “Look, Wright. We chose Bartlett because he’s a challenge. He’s not going to fall for some simple ruse just because M’s the reigning authority around here. They’ll be looking for that. He’ll know it’s coming.”

Arthur waves his hand through the air between them. “You’re underthinking it,” he informs Winters in no uncertain terms. “It’s because they think we won’t use something so simple that they won’t be prepared for it.”

“ _Mr. Wright_ ,” Winters sighs heavily. He takes a moment to press his hands together and look heavenward — praying for patience perhaps. “You can follow that line of thought forever, but the point of these exercises is to expand our minds — use a little imagination to do something no one has ever done before.”

“Imagination,” Arthur echoes, deadpan.

“Why don’t we try this instead—” Winters starts and then lays out a plan that involves mimicking the layout of their workroom and mock waking up from a failed extraction. "And then we just ask," he finishes. "No forging necessary — M or otherwise."

"Well then what's the point?" cuts in Scarbrough. "Wouldn't that just put our skills to waste?"

"Now would be a great time to start thinking on your feet, Scarbrough," Winters snaps back. "What use are Forgers if all we can do is wear other people's faces?" His attention swivels back to Arthur quickly enough. "Brilliant, isn't it? This is a very difficult volunteer to extract from after all. Everyone will expect us to fail."

Arthur crosses his arms. "He won't remember dreaming anything. That'll be a problem."

"But he won't think he is dreaming," argues Winters, "which is the point. He'll remember exactly how he got into this room, even if he doesn't remember the dreaming. And Mallorie—" He gives the slim, French Architect a flattering smile, "—she can make things seem so real."

Shaking his head, Arthur says, "This is sounding worse by the second, Winters. I can't be the only one that's heard about how bad an idea it is to build from reality. I don't want any of us waking up after the extraction wondering if we're actually awake."

"I can put in something different," Mallorie pipes up. "Something that when you see it, you'll know that it's the dream. Something impossible in the real world." Arthur raises a brow at her. "Like a top," she says. "Like a top that never stops spinning."

Winters makes these grand sort of gestures that Arthur thinks means, _thank you, someone on my side at last, satisfied yet, Mr. Wright?_ He follows it up with both his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. Arthur still doesn't like it, though, and it must show on his face because Winters takes a step toward him.

"Do you see any other problems we might face?" he asks.

O'Neill leans in. "How are we going to get him out?"

"I really don't think shooting him would be an issue," Arthur replies — because if everyone is on board with it, he might as well be too.

It's not that the plan has any problems to it because it actually seems relatively solid. It's essential, after all, to find a way to surprise someone of their target's difficulty level and all the more so when their target's coming in prepared to face an extraction. The problem is that he doesn't like it when dreams seem too real, doesn't like it when he sees things that are familiar when he could be walking through impossible Architecture. The problem is that Mallorie is really very good at building dreams, but Arthur isn't about to trust her with everything.

"We'll need some really tight mazework for everything outside the workshop," he says, "since we'll all be in here with the Mark."

"I'm on it," Mallorie replies promptly, reaching for her sketch pads.

"Good," Arthur says, nodding to her and then turning to look at Scarbrough and Winters. "Now which one of you wants to forge Mal?"

  


When Commander Bartlett walks into their workshop, he isn't really what Arthur expects. He's older, for one thing, than his rank and his file photo had really suggested. He's ragged around the eyes and graying at the temples. As short as he is, too, he strides into the workshop with all the certainty of a military man quite secure in his position. Bartlett starts off with an impassive, neutral expression — just short of a frown — but puts on a small, charming smile as he greets the team with a handshake. Only Scarbrough is missing, but Bartlett doesn't mention or seem to notice it.

"Pleased to meet you," he says to Arthur and then his smile broadens just a touch as he turns to Winters. "And you too, Mister...?

"Code name is Winters these days, sir." He takes Bartlett's hand warmly. "Nice to see you again."

Bartlett thumbs his nose. "Don't expect me to go easy on you. My subconscious is no slouch."

Winters laughs with a smile that's broad, wrinkling the corners of his eyes and the bridge of his nose, and Arthur is abruptly distracted by how it brightens his face. "I wouldn't expect anything less, sir."

The short exchange makes everyone cast furtive glances at one another. Up until this point, Winters hadn't said anything about knowing their Mark personally, though now that Arthur thinks on the possibility more seriously, the connection is obvious. Winters had said that Commander Bartlett was in charge of new dreamers. It only makes sense that the two had at least crossed paths.

The extraction gets set up without further elaboration on the dialogue between Winters and Bartlett, though it makes Arthur uneasy as Mallorie puts Bartlett under with a sedative and then helps with the IVs as Scarbrough comes in. He hopes that the history between the two doesn't turn Winters into an unexpected and unplanned for weak link. Arthur doesn't like it when Plan A goes bad and making up new plans of actions on the fly, while not impossible or even improbable, aren't exactly what he wants for a test like this.

"Don't worry," Mallorie says, smiling in that way of hers that is slightly sharp. Her hand is above the PASIV device, ready to start the Somnacin. "Sleep well, gentlemen."

Even knowing what they're doing and what their plan is, it's disorienting to feel that free fall, the sucking vacuum of sedation that pulls him down, and still wake up to what is essentially the same ceiling, the same walls, the same everything. Arthur immediately searches out the sign Mallorie had arranged and it's there: on the narrow desk that she'd claimed in reality, tucked carefully between the laptop and the cup of pens, the top silently spins and spins and spins.

Looking around, everyone is stirring in their seats. Scarbrough swings around to the PASIV wearing Mallorie's face. Arthur can tell in that one stretch of movement that Scarbrough's vastly improved since the start of this project. He's got the subtle swing of her hips down and his hair curls into his neck the way hers does.

When he gathers up the IVs from the dreamers, he comments in Mallorie's casual voice: "That was fast. I didn't expect any of you up for at least three more minutes. Did something go wrong?"

"Kicked," grunts Rhodey, radiating disappointment. "Projections were on us from the moment we went in."

The words are lie but the feeling, Arthur knows, isn't. As much as he seemed to agree with Winters' plan for extraction, the fact of the matter is that Rhodey has to be disappointed with the lack of fighting involved. Here, both Rhodey and Arthur are back-up — the only two dreamers that are truly meant to react if Winters' plan goes south.

"It was amazing!" cries O'Neill, cranking up his boyish charm to eleven. He's the youngest out of all of them and looks it too. If Arthur didn't have access to his file, he'd seriously question whether O'Neill was over eighteen, as slight and small as he looks. "I've never seen a mind work like that. Except for Mr. Wright's, of course. He took us apart nearly as fast as you, sir!"

Bartlett has a moment of disorientation. "I'm… Are you sure?"

Winters steps in silkily. "It was very impressive, sir," he says, smiling even as he lets his shoulders sag. Arthur imagines that the squeeze he gives Bartlett's shoulder is a bit limp under the weight of failure. "Your mind must have been prepared for us."

"Well, yes," Bartlett says. Some of his confusion melts away as he accepts Winters' explanation. "All of the volunteers were. We're supposed to give you all a hard time. It's a teaching exercise. It's not meant to be easy."

"Naturally," agrees O'Neill brightly. He dims a little, folding his arms in front of him on the arm rest as he leans toward Bartlett. "It's too bad, though. I'm pretty sure everyone was expecting great things from us."

Bartlett nods slowly. "You are a collection of very impressive dreamers," he tells O'Neill. "But you can't have expected to win every round."

"No. Of course." O'Neill's eyes drop to the ground while his mouth twists this way and that with youthful malcontent. "It's just that Mr. Wright's been working so hard with us these last few weeks. I mean, sure he's not an Extractor, but he's a real challenge to get information on. And then, Winters did a lot of work with Mal on the Architecture..." He trails off, glancing up at Bartlett and then over to the rest of the team.

Scarbrough leans down to pat O'Neill's hand. It's not something that Mallorie ever did in reality, but it conveys the solidarity they want Bartlett to believe whenever he says, in her quietly lilting French tone: "I think what he's trying to say is that we've come a long way already. We're much more of a team now than any of us expected to be."

Winters sighs. "So what now? Since we've failed, we can't go on to the next stage in the lesson plan, can we?"

Bartlett is slow to look at Winters. His attention is grabbed by O'Neill, who appears to have sunken down into a pit of teenage misery. "You'll get another chance," he explains, "after we've reviewed your performance. With a volunteer Mark at a lower level, though."

"That's good," Arthur jumps in. "Not all hope is lost." He nudges Rhodey. "Next time, maybe you'll get a proper shot at those projections."

Rhodey nods. "It'll be nice to get at least a couple shots in before they get me." His smile is a little thin.

"That's it then, hm?" Winters asks, raising his brows at Bartlett. "I guess we can let you get on your merry way, Commander. It was a good chase while it lasted."

"Right," Bartlett says, pushing himself to his feet and nodding to Scarbrough.

Everyone waits for a moment, watching as Bartlett gathers his coat and starts to the door. Arthur looks to O'Neill, who pipes up immediately: "Sir!"

Bartlett turns, but it's with a soft smile on his face, as if he'd expected to get called. O'Neill scurries to his side, fingers twisting at his sides.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, seeing as it won't make any difference now," O'Neill says. "What were we supposed to figure out?"

Bartlett stands straighter and Arthur suddenly worries that they're going to have projections banging at the walls any second now. Already his mind is backtracking over the different mistakes they could have made — O'Neill's wording was forced, perhaps, or Scarbrough's Forgery too faulty; had Winters not revealed enough or was his being here at all enough to put Bartlett on alert? Rhodey is tense at Arthur's elbow; he'd come up with some concerns of his own already.

Glancing at his watch, Bartlett grudgingly concedes that, "I have a little time."

The small bubble of excitement that rises through O'Neill is plainly visible in his expression. It's cute — really — and Arthur wonders whether he ever considered doing Forgery, if he'd attempted it and failed to gather that loose sense of identity. It's no matter now, he supposes. O'Neill's found his niche being an Extractor.

Bartlett folds his coat over one hand and then laces his fingers together below his belly. "The fact of the matter is," he starts, "there is no secret. This stage is for the evaluation of your skills as a team."

A ripple of shock goes through them all. It's not an answer any of them expected, so Arthur steps forward.

"So we really didn't pass then," he says, clinging to the story that Winters had developed for them to work by. "We didn't even get a chance to see you in the dream."

With a thoughtful little hum, Bartlett lifts his chin. "That's so," he agrees. "In any case, I have most of the information I need to do a proper evaluation. But I would like to see one more thing before I go." Arthur raises his brows, questioning, as Bartlett reaches back for the doorknob to the exit. "Mr. Wright? Rhodey? How are your trigger fingers?"

  


"You knew?" is the first indignant thing out of Winters' mouth when they rise from their dream after the timer runs out. He doesn't sound very pleased with having been outsmarted, especially by a former mentor.

Bartlett laughs as he hands over his cannula to Mallorie, who isn't being played by Scarbrough anymore because there's no spinning top on her desk. "Yes," he tells Winters. "Not that it wasn't a beautifully laid out design by your Architect. And the plan for the extraction was sound — getting me to trust and sympathize with this young man—" He patted O'Neill's arm, "—before having him ask me."

"Then how would you know?" Arthur asks in a voice louder than he intends because he's still running high off the adrenaline rush of fighting Bartlett's projections. "If the dream felt real enough and the extraction was good, what was wrong?"

"You were missing a player," Bartlett explains. "You're working in a very structured environment, Mr. Wright. Every team has six members. I only met five. It was a clever ruse — one that would have worked in the real world — but not here, I'm afraid." He pauses for a moment to let it all sink in. "Did you have a back up plan?"

"Not especially," Winters grouses. "But O'Neill did want to use a forge of M. Would that have worked?"

The look that Bartlett gives Winters is considering, completely knowledgeable about Winters' abilities. "It would depend on the quality of the Forgery, I should think," he says, "but risky. One never wants to get on a lady's bad side, wouldn't you agree?"

Mal's smile has teeth in it. "Truer words were never spoken, Commander."

"Right," Bartlett says, rising from where he'd been dreaming. He shakes Arthur's hand and then Winters' in turn. "You'll have my report in the morning, Mr. Wright. Always interesting seeing you, Winters."

"Likewise, sir," replies Winters. "We should do this again sometime."

"I should think not," Bartlett says as he makes his departure, giving the workshop a lingering examination. "I have enough trouble with _deja vu_ as it is."

  


Without the goal of an extraction and any constructive criticism having to wait until morning, the members of their team go their separate ways. Arthur sticks around, unsure of what to do with himself, and is surprised to see Winters do the same. At first, Arthur thinks Winters is daydreaming. While not something unusual for the type of people that make it into their field, usually daydreaming is exchanged for the real thing sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, Winters is lounging quietly in a chair, chin braced on on his elbow, scratching idly at his cheek as he looks at the drawings Mallorie had pinned to the drawing board.

To Arthur, Winters' gaze seems to be far off and his mind much further than even that, so when he comes closer, he doesn't expect to be noticed or for Winters to turn slightly at his approach and say, "I guess we should both be getting home. No rest for the wicked, hm?"

His voice sounds weary — unreasonably so, Arthur thinks, considering Bartlett had left sounding more positive about the attempted extraction than not. It would be outside his nature to be comforting, but he can afford to be sympathetic — at least, subtly.

"I'm not really all that tired," Arthur says, glancing the little kitchenette that Rhodey had set up in the corner complete with coffee maker and piles of snacks. "I could make us some coffee."

So Arthur makes coffee and they sit across from near one another, framing one corner of the table that has the PASIV and Bartlett's file on the other end. Winters folds one hand around the mug, taking in the heat without speaking. His hair has grown this last month and a half of training. It hangs in his eyes and sticks out over his ears. The harshly buzzed line that it had been in when Arthur had first arrived in London is now softened with growth. It makes Arthur think of time and how little he's noticed its passage.

It occurs to him that... "We haven't really had a moment to ourselves, have we?" he says. Winters' eyes flick over to him. Arthur's pointedly not turned to look at him. His eyes are on the PASIV, but its like he can feel the slip of breath between Winters' lips.

"We've been pretty busy," admits Winters, "though I haven't noticed time as usual."

Arthur grins. "Time flies when you're having fun?" he ventures.

Winters makes a small noise as he takes a drink from his mug. "Something like that. You, for instance. You’ve lived up to your reputation more than I'd bargained for, Mr. Wright. I'm impressed."

Arthur pretended to be insulted — of course, he was excellent — but a part of him was glad to have been noticed and not found wanting. It was one thing to be respected by those who couldn't do better, but Winters was an unrivaled Forger. A peer in every sense but their individual venues.

"I wish I could say the same," Arthur replies and when Winters' expression goes kind of incredulous, he quickly hurries to say, "Reviews were very mixed when I asked. It's like they were never talking about the same person."

"Professional hazard," explains Winters. "Though honestly, I'm surprised you got any information at all."

"You seemed to have plenty on me." The words are out of Arthur's mouth before he really has a chance to think about them. The way Winters goes still is telling. He hadn't thought he would get called on his behavior, and now that Arthur realizes this, he can't help but ask, "Why did you start doing what you did? The gifts, I mean."

Winters' reply doesn't come quickly. He takes the time to build up his explanation and Arthur watches as his jaw works around the words, as his eyes take in the details of Arthur's face contemplatively. His tongue licks over the front of his teeth, as if he finds it distasteful to have the answer pulled out of him.

He says in a tone that is bland and dismissive: "Because I could."

Arthur leans forward on his crossed arms. Winters is the one person in all the world that has bothered to — and succeeded in — finding a great deal of his secrets. Knowing the kinds of roundabout paths Winters must have taken to find that information, Arthur can't imagine that he had done it only to prove his own extraordinary ability.

"That can't be all," Arthur tells Winters. He thinks about how the gifts had started out so general but had ultimately become more finely tuned to Arthur's tastes. "I think you wanted me to know that you knew where I was. Not only that, but also that you knew me or were learning me. Isn't that what Forgers do?"

"Mr. Wright," scolds Winters. It's all the protest that he puts forward, though. Arthur watches him carefully as he takes a drink from his mug. His expression is somewhat pained but otherwise inscrutable.

"You don't have to answer," Arthur offers. After all, it's possible that Winters might not want to talk about his reasons for doing things, even if he's more than happy to tell people _how._

His words bring Winters' gaze back to him. As always, the gaze is assessing — a bit scrutinizing and altogether interested — but there's no way for Arthur to tell what Winters finds, if he finds Arthur wanting in some way, or if he sees something he hadn't expected. The longer the look lasts, the more uncomfortable Arthur becomes, hyper-aware of the heat crawling around his shoulders.

"It's because of rules," says Winters, setting aside his coffee and leaning toward Arthur with his chin resting on his fist. Arthur casts him a quizzical look, not catching on at once. "Rules are such a large part of our programs. It's black and white, right and wrong, possible and impossible, but in Myanmar—" Winters splays his hands in a helpless gesture. "In Myanmar, you broke them. It was interesting."

"Interesting," Arthur echoes. He's pushing for more. The want to do so comes unexpectedly. "And your help in Germany — am I supposed to think of that as a gift? Or was that you breaking the rules?"

Winters shrugs and then leans back, scratching at the side of his face. "Is this why you stuck around?" He gestures to the workshop around them. "Are you trying to interrogate me?"

"I'm just curious as to why you would have bothered," Arthur tells him. "The Architect was selling drugs and equipment on the black market and though — yes — it was while we were in Germany, it's not exactly your government's jurisdiction. I would have figured it out eventually." That pulls a funny look onto Winters' face — something skeptical and kind of amused. " _I would have_ ," Arthur assures him. "You could have left us alone, but you acted instead."

"While it would have said much of your character, I'm sure," Winters jumps in with words that huff out of him. "The fact is that while it might not be necessarily within England's natural territories, Germany is a sight closer than most. Neither of our leaders would be too keen on illegal dreamers getting their hands on the latest and best, right?"

"Of course," Arthur answers and is surprised at his own disappointment.

He had hoped to hear something more, he thinks — something that would point him in the right direction. He half wonders if he's been imagining the feeling that's been sustaining his curiosity. Wasn't it just a couple months ago that he'd shoved his way off a plane, desperate to see if Winters was there to greet him?

"Plus," adds Winters, "it was as good an excuse as any to break into your hotel room." He grins at the way Arthur tilts slightly widened eyes in his direction and there it is — that shark-like smile that dares Arthur to make awful decisions. "I had no idea you'd kept so many of my cards, Mr. Wright."

Laughing, Arthur stands from the table and says, "And on that note, I think I'll call it a night."

Without quite knowing why, Arthur is all nerves as he takes his coffee mug to the sink to rinse it out. He's only certain at the mention of his keeping Winters' messages that he doesn't want the other man to realize just how many he actually has still, that the batch he brought with him to Germany was merely a portion of his full collection. It's not an entirely embarrassing part of his life, however; the messages are a good way of keeping track of Winters, who seems unable to stop himself from leaving them everywhere.

"Yes. I should do the same."

The way Winters says it makes Arthur turn away from his cup to look over his shoulder at him. Winters rubs the backs of his fingers against his stubble before swiping at his lower lip. His expression is undecipherable for the few seconds that it takes Arthur to drag his gaze up to Winters' eyes. Even then, the look in Winters' eyes makes Arthur's palms sweat.

Intending to say goodnight, Arthur sets aside his cup to dry overnight and turns completely toward Winters to lean back against the counter. It occurs to him that they've been trying to figure each other out all evening — each of them with their own skills. Arthur's been relying on words, is all, while Winters could do the same by just watching. He doesn't know if Winters got any more out of him and his body language than he had out of Winters, but there's at least one thing that he doesn't think will be turned down.

"You know," he begins, giddy almost at the the words he knows are about to spill out from him. "It seems strange to talk to someone whose name I don't know."

Winters stands up as Arthur starts to speak and gathers his mostly-full mug up to be taken to the sink like Arthur's. "I suppose it must," he replies with a hint of a amusement leaking through. "You mean to say you didn't find my name anywhere for all your research?"

The teasing surprise in Winters' voice betrays the idea that Arthur was never expected to find anything other than a code name. Arthur wonders if he was so lucky — if somehow Winters truly managed to find out everything about him while Arthur sifted through for the slightest scrap of information. It doesn't matter now what either of them have found, he guesses — not when they're rubbing shoulders by the sink while Winters washes his cup and not when they've spent months learning how the other's mind works.

"Don't kid," Arthur says, brushing aside the other man's change of topic. He moves until he and Winters are standing in front of each other. It feels important to do this right, after all. He sticks out his hand and breathes, and breathes and — "I'm Arthur."

That makes Winters' attention snap toward him at once. He hesitates, looking at Arthur's hand with no small amount of caution. When he does take Arthur's hand, finally, Winters' palm is still moist from the water, but the effect softens his calluses into something pleasant. Arthur fits the crook of their thumbs together, and without thinking, slides his index finger over Winters' wrist.

Winters smiles almost shyly. "Eames," he says, giving Arthur's hand a firm squeeze. "Pleasure to meet you."

"Eames," repeats Arthur. He chuckles softly, letting his hand linger in the handshake. "I would never have guessed that."

Eames — his name is Eames — his smile is even broader than it had been all evening. "It was sort of the point when I chose it." For a second, Arthur feels like he's slipping. Like he's made some mistake letting his real name go loose when all he has is a code name again. Eames must sense that because he says, "My mum let me — when I was old enough to make those kinds of decisions."

Just like that, Arthur's on sure footing again and he breathes, breathes, _breathes_ this moment. "It suits you," he tells Eames and thinks about how — when this is all over, when he's back home with what's left of that bottle of rum and Le Petit Prince and stacks of paperwork — he'll take a sharpie to his box of white note cards and write Eames' name across the front of it.

It takes a couple seconds — but just a couple — for either of them to realize that they're just standing there holding hands, not even bothering with the handshake anymore. Arthur does the final squeeze, and Eames cups his hand around Arthur's fingers as they slide apart. Feeling awkward but also warm, Arthur tucks both hands into his back pockets to keep the feeling of having them enclosed for a little while longer.

Arthur casts about for a change of topic. He tilts his head toward the coffee maker. "We should—"

"Right. Coffee," Eames cuts in immediately, downing the remaining contents in several gulps. He licks his lips afterward. "I'll handle it. No worries. If you want, you can—"

"Yeah, I should go to—" _bed_ , Arthur means to finish as he turns toward he exit of their workshop while Eames is fumbling with the coffee grinds behind him. He twists around, caught by a sudden thought. "Eames," he calls.

Eames looks up immediately, caught awkwardly with his hand in the coffee maker and his foot hooked behind the trash to pull it from under the cabinetry.

"We should do this again sometime," Arthur says and then ducks his head because this could mean anything and really why are words so stupid exactly when he needs them to work together the most? "I mean... I'm pretty sure that we'll make it to the real world reconnaissance in the next stage, and it's not like I'm not going to be here for another four months, but..." He fumbles with his words like an idiot and Eames is just watching him, intently but also with a kind of sympathy. "What I mean is after this," he finally says. "After this project is over, we should work together sometime. I think we'd be good."

"Arthur." Eames is smiling but kind of sadly. He dumps the coffee grinds and slides the trash back under the cabinets with his foot while he scrubs his palms over his thighs. "You do remember that we work for different countries, right?"

"Of course," Arthur snaps back softly. He had remembered. The thing is that he'd just forgotten why that should have made any difference. "I was just saying that sometime, when we're _not_ —"

"I'd love to," Eames interrupts.

He has no idea why his heart is hammering the way it is. "You don't have to if you—"

"Arthur," Eames cuts in and really, Arthur is stupidly grateful that he keeps doing that because speaking is apparently difficult tonight and this is one of the reasons why he never became an Extractor. "I'd love to work with you. Sometime. When we're not working opposite sides of the Atlantic."

"Good," he says, relieved to the promise inherent in Eames' words. It's not a _next time_ or even a _next month_ promise, but it's there — somewhere in the future. His hands fist in his back pockets and he glances back at the exit because he really should leave. "See you tomorrow then," he says.

Eames taps his fingers over the top of the cabinets in a nervous fidget. His voice, though, is calming and final before Arthur makes his escape: "Goodnight, Arthur."

  


The next few days find them using their code names in conversation more than necessary. It's done with a sly smile around the syllables, made complete by the knowledge that only they know the truth of the situation. Every _Mr. Wright_ and each _Winters_ is tinged with the soft edge of intimacy — malleable and warm. If the frequency makes the rest of the team curious, none of them mention it, but Arthur figures it's for the best. They're too swamped in the initial research for the second stage of the joint project — a mission in the real world, reconnaissance primarily on neutral territories that everyone can agree on.

Arthur can't deny that he likes the layers of their secrets and being able to think _Eames_ when he sees the other man's face. It makes him feel lighter when he hears Eames' voice wrapping around his code name, purring over _Mister_ and cutting sharp at the end of _Wright_. He can't stop thinking about how future meetings — meetings outside of dream sharing, outside of this building — could have them greeting each other honestly.

Increasingly, he feels as if he's entering into a routine, where every morning is comprised of the think tank and every afternoon is full of dreaming. Sometimes he works through lunch, but Rhodey or Mallorie (or lately, Eames) will get him something from the cafeteria. He usually stays late with paperwork, but today he's getting an early start.

Rhodey wants a set of files to be released and there's the request for a PASIV to be submitted. So, Arthur is on the administration floor when he sees M. She's heading down the hall in a suit of warm colors that's completely at odds with her crisp demeanor. He's only spoken with her on a handful of times during her rounds through the different teams and most recently when she dropped by a few days after their test with Commander Bartlett to congratulate them on a job well done. 

M has always been polite when speaking with him — pleasant and businesslike with a side of humor that implies that she has a greater insight into his character than he might like — but even after Arthur has updated her on the team's progress, she speaks privately and quietly with Eames. He doesn't know what it is — if she doubts his reliability or if it's because Eames is her agent first and foremost — but it's never kept her from speaking with him. Arthur supposes he should be glad that she chooses to speak with him at all.

From what he's heard, M is a strict leader and highly adaptable. She's had her fair share of unruly espionage agents — the most famous being, of course, those coded under the number 007 — but it's only made her more handy at reining in the agents that would sooner chew through a lead than heel. For all intents and purposes, Arthur's come to consider her as mostly kind, but alarmingly formidable when she needs to be.

When she catches sight of Arthur, she raises a hand to him absentmindedly as she leans toward her assistant, Moneypenny, who is murmuring very quickly as she hands over an electronic pad. A few more explanations are exchanged between them and eventually M takes the stylus to sign it. 

Only then does she call out: "Mr. Wright, if you have a moment."

He doesn't actually have a moment and is heading towards the workshop and in the opposite direction of her apparent course. Refusing her, however, is fairly impossible since it seems that Moneypenny has assumed that Arthur would take her place and has scooted back a couple paces to make room beside M. When Arthur falls into step with her, M doesn't immediately speak. She takes the time to greet a couple others as they pass, including Rhodey, who nods to Arthur before heading in the direction of the workshop.

M seems to be taking her time to get to the business she wants to start with Arthur. He hopes that Rhodey will at least tell the rest of the team why he'll be running late.

As they walk together, the number of people they encounter dwindles, and M tilts her head toward him. "How's the progress with your team?"

His brow creases despite his efforts to keep his expression neutral. "Not much further along than when we spoke a few days ago," he tells her honestly. "Mostly it's been the initial research into the new Mark until we have all the information we need for a good brainstorming session."

"It sounds like you've been keeping busy, then," she comments.

"It's been an incredible experience," he offers. He feels like she's fishing for something in particular, but he doesn't know what. "Winters alone has been enough to keep me on my toes."

She does smile at that; he supposes she must be pleased at the compliment to one of her best dreamers, but he can't be sure. He can't tell her that Eames has become more of an interest than the collaborative dreaming or that Eames makes him more willing to take risks he wouldn't otherwise. He can't tell her how much he wishes he had the same freedom as Eames with his work or how he's started to question his loyalty to his country when all he wants to do is cut loose with a PASIV and show everyone how it's done.

He can't. So, when she asks if working with the European dreamshare program has taught him anything, he merely answers, "Yes. A great deal more than expected."

"How fortuitous." M's voice is sharp. There's no other way to describe it, really. She's being cautious with her words and Arthur wonders if she's being so critical with his, if there's something he should worry about. "Of course, even without this opportunity, I'm sure a man of your skill will always be able to find work."

If there's anything that Arthur has learned in the couple months he's been here, it's that the British have the undeniable ability to say everything with nothing. It's in the tone of their voice — or the lack of inflection. It's in how they avoid particular topics and wish for the complete opposite of what they want. Eames does it all the time when he compliments the abilities of dreamers he thinks are shit and follows it up with advice for improvement. He tells Arthur that it softens the blow of criticism, but Arthur's always worked with the idea that people should just get a thicker skin if they couldn't handle it.

Whatever it is that M is trying to tell him, Arthur just wishes she would come out and say it.

He's certain that she sees the confused look that he gives her, but M carries on without pausing. "It's always interesting to see what happens to agents after they leave," she starts without specifying if she means collaborative efforts like the project they're doing now or if she means dream sharing altogether. "Sometimes they do well in the real world, but usually not. Too often, they fall into the wrong crowds. Working with government support makes people cocky and that attitude leads to mistakes, poor judgement, and fatalities."

They arrive at the elevators while M is still talking and she reaches to stab at the up button before straightening her jacket. "There's always the chance, however, that they were foolish enough not to know what they were getting into at the time. More's the pity," she continues as the elevator pings its arrival and gives Arthur an appraising look after she's stepped into its confines with Moneypenny. "They were all good agents, too. Much like yourself, Mr. Wright."

Arthur holds the elevator doors open with his hand. His mind is whirling through the many possible explanations for this conversation, but if he's honest with himself, he knows that he has too little information to go on. "M, what are you trying to say?"

That would be when a disturbance starts making itself known behind Arthur. When he turns to look, it's Eames — because of course it is — and Worth is hot on his heels. They're shouting at each other, which is a bit of a surprise, but then he hasn't seen Worth much at all except when they're checking out PASIVs together or at the periodic seminars on morale and team-building.

"You think it's just a coincidence?" Worth is growling. "I know you don't believe in those, Winters."

"Keep your theories and your suspicions to yourself," Eames hisses right back. "I don't want to hear them."

"You'll regret dismissing them when I turn out to be right," Worth cautions. They're close enough now that Worth actually notices that Arthur and M are nearby. The look Worth stabs in Arthur's direction is downright vicious, but he's fast to return his attention to Eames. "Winters, you should have joined my team when this started. Imagine the things you could have learned with me—"

Eames twists on his heel sharp enough that he almost shoves Worth back. "I've learned plenty where I am," he says through grit teeth. 

His retort doesn't surprise Arthur nearly so much as it shakes Worth. It's true that neither he nor Eames have really learned anything in terms of their ability to dream, but between them, there's a sort of freedom, a lack of restriction that makes them feel comfortable in doing anything. The fact is that there is nothing more they can learn from being in the militarized dreaming programs, but just being here has introduced them to a world of possibility.

Worth's perspective is too narrow, Arthur realizes. He's only focused on Eames' ability to forge. Arthur is surprised to find himself a bit angry for Eames' sake, as if Worth's unconscious snub of Eames' abilities is something Arthur should take personally. 

It's while Arthur is mulling over the Extractor's behavior that Worth's voice dips low. "I've seen your progress reports, Winters. Your skills are going to waste. You could forge whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, but Wright's got you play acting. You think I didn't notice that you didn't forge in your test dream? Instead, the forging gets passed onto Scarbrough. He's a shadow compared to you!"

"The plan was mine," starts Eames, but Worth railroads right over him.

"You're the best Forger I've ever met," he insists, pressing into Eames' space. "You can't tell me that whatever shoddy impersonation Scarbrough came up with would have ever stood a chance with you or that seeing it didn't make you think of all the ways you would have done it better."

M shoves past Arthur as she leaves the elevator. "What the hell is going on out here?" she demands. Worth and Eames stand there, almost at each other's throats, but say nothing. Frustrated, M gestures toward Eames first. "Well?" she urges.

Eames sniffs, clearly this side of furious but reining it in well, and steps back from Worth. "A misunderstanding, I'm sure," he says.

"Like hell it was," Worth snarls.

"Oh!" M cuts in, staring Worth down. "You speak when it's your turn, am I clear?" When Worth ducks his head with a lazy salute, M looks expectantly at Eames.

"I heard you were talking with Mr. Wright," Eames explains, nodding toward Arthur. "I ran into Worth on the way. He said some things I didn't agree with."

"And you?" M turns to Worth with brows raised and her mouth in a thin, displeased line. "What happened, then?"

Worth rubs under his nose, looking at Eames' profile with a frown. "Just stating my opinion was all."

Before M can clear anything up, though, Eames mutters out of the corner of his mouth. "Your opinion is shit."

"All I _said_ ," Worth says with a haughty little grumble, "was that I thought Mr. Wright doesn't know what Winters' full potential really is."

Arthur raises a brow when Eames whirls on him at once to say, "Wright knows plenty. He knows a hell of a lot more than you ever do, you conceited pile of—!"

M's voice is like a thunderclap: "Winters!" Eames' mouth snaps shut at once, expression cooled into something stony. "Now," she says, quieter now that she has control again. "This looks like a disagreement of perspective, and I, for one, am grateful that you two aren't on the same team. Lord knows how much of a ruckus we've been spared. I suggest that the two of you go your separate ways before I'm forced to put something in your permanent record."

Apparently satisfied with diffusing the situation, M leaves with Moneypenny. It's only when the elevator doors close and he's left with Eames and Worth glaring at each other that Arthur realizes that he never did get a clear answer out of M about their earlier conversation. Pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache, he's about to usher Eames back toward their workshop so that they can get back to work on research, but Worth seems determined to ruin that plan.

"Appreciate the time you have left," Worth says to Arthur, bringing to bear the full sense of foreboding along with a sneer. His expression is much more pleasant when it turns toward Eames. "You should start shopping for a new Point Man, if you ask me."

"I didn't," Eames bites out. 

Worth takes it in stride. "Well, it's my advice anyway," he says. "You know as well as I do that Rhodey won't be able to keep up to your exacting standards."

"And I suppose that you think your Point Man can do better," intones Eames coldly.

The smile that spreads over Worth's face is incredibly self-satisfied. "Just think on it," he says, "before you're forced to."

  


  
[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595808) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595808) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595828) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595830) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595853) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595828)


	10. Chrono 3

**LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2009)**

When their team is dreaming — under for fifteen minutes in order to explore the possibility of a new maze of Mallorie's — Arthur and Eames stay up top to talk. It's nothing they arrange beforehand, but Arthur's made a point of sitting at his computer while everyone else was doing the calculations for the Somnacin dosage. Eames offers to watch over the PASIV and depresses the plunger to start the dream before joining Arthur at his desk.

"I wouldn't mind anything that Worth says," is Eames' lead in. He leans against the corner of the desk and crosses his arms. "He's too arrogant by half. Not worth our time."

"Worth is not actually my main concern," Arthur admits. "It's something M was probably trying to tell me, but Worth has only justified my suspicions."

Eames looks down at him. "I'm not following."

"M was making comments about me not needing to worry about finding work if I were to ever leave dream sharing," he explains. "She was pretty vague about why, but with Worth saying things about me not sticking around, I have to wonder if there isn't some merit to what he was saying."

The way Eames looks at him changes into something pensive, as if he'd never considered taking Worth's words seriously until Arthur brought up M. Eames' brow furrows, and his next words come slowly, carefully: "There's no reason to think you would leave before the end of program."

"Isn't there?" Arthur isn't so sure himself, but even though he would like to find for himself if there is, he has nothing to point him in the right direction. "If it's enough for M—"

"I'll look into it."

Arthur looks up at Eames. He sounds serious about it, which shouldn't be a surprise to Arthur, except that it is and continues to be over the next few days. Eames leaves the team in Arthur's care, and next thing Arthur knows, he's catching Eames rubbing elbows with people all over the place. It's because he doesn't know what Eames means by _I’ll look into it_ that Arthur is nervous. While Eames is conducting business or investigating, Arthur finds himself, more often than not, leaving their team to their own devices so that he can pace the halls and just watch Eames work. Whenever Arthur returns to his observation after glancing away for just a moment, the other man has approached a whole, different person just to chat, quietly, and sometimes shake hands or smile. At the end of each day, Arthur is seething out of frustration. He can't stand not knowing what's going on, and Eames gives him the most bare-bones of updates.

"Nothing's pointing to you, specifically," is what Eames explains to him. "It's just suspicions on everyone's parts and frankly, you Americans are easy targets."

"But why are there even suspicions in the first place, Eames?" Arthur asks. He shoves his hands through his hair, putting it into complete disarray, and then pushes himself from his seat toward his computer. "You're doing all this and then telling me nothing. I should just look for myself."

Eames follows closely and grabs Arthur's hands before they can touch the keyboard. "Don't," he says. "It'll look bad for you to look into things yourself."

"Okay, fine." He's trying to speak as calmly as he can, which is probably why he sounds waspish even to himself. "Then tell me why it looks bad. What are people saying?"

Heaving a sigh that seems inappropriately put-upon from Arthur's perspective, Eames deigns to explain himself. "The Administrative Department," he starts, "keeps track of the files of all the participants in this project — everyone from the administrators themselves to the janitorial service to the dreamers and volunteer Marks in between." 

"I know that already," Arthur snaps.

Eames waves aside the snipe and carries on. "Well, it seems that there's been a lot of activity going on in that department. It's not under your name — no more than I've known you to request information — but there is a large number of requests that have been made by people who aren't even team leaders or even participants in the program."

"Huh." That _is_ suspicious. "So, information on what exactly? Dreamers or the people in charge?"

"Dreamers. And—" here, Eames taps his nose, "—it should be noted that none of the files requested belong to American dreamers. Hence, the directed suspicion."

"Our files would be useless anyway," Arthur explains. "If you'd seen them, you'd know that my government would only have supplied yours with the minimal information necessary to make this project work in the first place."

"Believe me, I've seen them," Eames sighs, patting Arthur on the back of the hand. "The fact remains that, seeing how things are, a lot of people are going to be difficult to work with from now on. They're going to be nervous about their information being out there in someone else's hands. M, of course, would like things to run smoothly all the time, but she can't change anything without proof of your innocence or someone else's guilt."

Arthur's taken aback. "So that's it?" He pulls his hands back from Eames and nudges him to the side to get to his computer. "There wasn't a pattern to anything that you noticed? What about dates? Was there any particular attention paid to a dreamer?"

"I guess I can't keep you from doing your job," Eames mutters. 

Arthur wants to just gesture broadly at himself and say, _Point Man_. "You can't," he agrees as he signs into the computer and starts pulling up programs. "It was my mistake to let you look into things on your own when I could be doing the same."

Eames wraps his hand around one of Arthur's wrists, stilling his typing. "Arthur," he says and waits until he's looked up before continuing. "Would it really be so bad if things ended now?"

"What are you saying?" Arthur asks. His chest feels tight at the suggestion. "What about the rest of the project? Don't you want to see things through?"

"I couldn't give a shit about the project," Eames confesses. "I've already got what I wanted out of this project, and I thought you did, too." His fingers squeeze infinitesimally against Arthur's pulse point. "I never thought we'd have the chance to work together."

Arthur wants to pull away from Eames but can't bring himself to do so. The fatalistic, nostalgic way that Eames is talking implies that the end of the project is nigh, and Arthur just wants to grab him, shake him, and shout that it isn't over yet. There might be some dissent among the European dreamers if the Americans stayed, but that didn't matter to Arthur in the long run so long as he kept his team and he kept working with Eames. While Eames was right about him having already got what he wanted from the collaborative project, it didn't mean that he wanted to let it go any time soon.

"We're not done yet," Arthur says and is confused when Eames looks away. "Oh, my god. You can't _actually_ believe that I'm the one doing this."

"Well of course not, darling," Eames says with an appeasing tone as he turns to look back at Arthur, "but I _know_ you."

"But everyone else is different," Arthur finishes for him.

"Yes," Eames replies pointedly. "Yes, they're different than you. Look at how the situation is, Arthur. Someone among us is interested — very interested — in the personal information of dreamers. Can you expect me to just brush that aside when you know as well as I do how that information can be exploited?"

"I expect you to be willing to dig deep enough to find the real culprit," Arthur argues.

Eames frowns. "Right, but you don't think it could possibly be an American."

Arthur shakes his head. "I don't know who it is, but neither can I trust your judgement when you seem willing enough to think it isn't me."

"Well, it wouldn't be, would it?" Eames says. "You already know more than my file would ever give anyone."

"And that's supposed to mean what, exactly?" Arthur asks.

"It means that, as much as the guilty party is interested in everyone else, they're very interested in me." Eames licks his lips with a resigned smack. "My file's been requested at least ten or fifteen times, each under a different name with progressively higher security clearances," he says and then off of Arthur's worried look, reassures him with: "They wouldn't be able to get anything. My information's about as well protected as it gets — as you well know."

Reminded of when he'd tried hunting down Eames' information, Arthur feels a little warm. It seems so long ago; so many things have happened since then. Still, it bothers him that he's never seen a file on Eames that wasn't blacked out considerably. That other people have been looking for Eames with what are likely to be far fewer good intentions makes him uneasy.

"I would be grateful," Arthur tells Eames, "except that your mystery seems to be grabbing a lot of attention."

"I wouldn't worry," is apparently Eames' idea of comfort. It only makes Arthur worry more. "Really. The only things they would find are my work records. Well, that and my code name." Eames' smile is all warmth as it spreads across his face. "Concentrate on the project for a while, Arthur. Let me handle the rest. Can you do that?"

Arthur doesn't say anything for a while. He wants to believe Eames, but can't help but worry that the other man's bias has caused him to miss something vital. Eames seems insistent, though.

"Give it another few days, and I'll have everything taken care of, Arthur," he says, ducking a little to give Arthur a pleading look and squeezing his hand around Arthur's fingers. "Trust me, Arthur, please."

Squeezing back, Arthur sighs. "Alright."

  


When Eames leaves to continue his investigation, Arthur sits at his desk doing nothing for a while. He's listless and keeps rubbing at the wrist Eames had wrapped his hand around. The sight of the other man's reassuring smile isn't enough to wipe away his worries and frankly, he can't forget how Eames had brushed aside the culprit's obvious and possibly personal interest in him as unimportant compared to Arthur. 

With that in mind, Arthur does some digging of his own, starting with the Administrative Department. He compiles the things he finds onto a small flash drive. At first sight, the first document he saves looks just like dates, but Arthur highlights the ones that match between his visits to the Technology Department and the dates listed for file requests from the Administrative Department. It's not a leap of logic that everyone would have made, but the two sections are across the hall from each other. It's easy to go to the Administration to pick up the file on a Mark and then a few steps to Tech to pick up a PASIV; Arthur's done it himself a couple times, but this is what he figures M finds suspicious enough to confront him.

The second document is more supposition on Arthur's part. It has the dates of the file requests, just like the first, but this time they're matched up with links to camera footage of Worth. Arthur remembers how Worth had always been lurking nearby when Arthur was picking up or turning in a PASIV to Tech, and though he hadn't thought much of it at the time, it suddenly becomes important to note that Worth had never seemed to have a PASIV with him at the time and Arthur had always been the first to leave the area. It's not enough to cast suspicion on Worth — especially considering that there are scattered dates that don't match at all — but maybe it's enough to give Arthur a finger to point in another direction.

There's a third document that lists the names of all the requested files in order of frequency. Eames' code name is at the top with a count of just over forty inquiries. After Eames, the request count drops markedly to the single digits. There are a few interesting notes Arthur's made in the margins. There are no requests for files on the American dreamers — none at all. It's not altogether surprising because the Americans are all the team leaders, but it bothers Arthur considerably to think that no one had thought to look into those files. Also of note is that Commander Bartlett's name is so high up the list at three requests, only one of which belongs to Arthur.

Arthur also manages to dig up a general report that had been sent to M regarding the progress of all the teams. As far as he can tell, Worth and his team haven't been making much progress, having only just put in the request for a volunteer Mark with a low difficulty rating. It wouldn't be anything worth noting since sometimes people just don't work well together, but Arthur knows that the American Extractor in charge of them is gifted with extraordinary people skills. There's no way he wouldn't have managed to work something out unless there were teammates that were just too busy elsewhere to be of any use.

He's at his desk through the night, but by morning, he's feeling like it's been a productive night. His body aches and every move feels sluggish. He thinks that coffee sounds like a great idea and goes to make a fresh pot. Going through the motions is almost enough to wake him up on its own, but it's quick work to pour out some grinds into a filter and water into the tank. When he turns around to lean against the counter, tired and feeling it, M is standing at his desk.

"You've been busy," M says in lieu of a hello as she taps at his keyboard. "That seems to be your _raison d'etre_ , Mr. Wright. I can't say it's unexpected, but that you've become a problem for me overnight is something I didn't see coming."

Tired and regretting his fervor from yesterday already, Arthur scrubs at his face and says, "I didn't realize I'd reached that level of efficiency. May I ask what you're referring to precisely?"

"You got into my mail last night," M clarifies as she plugs the flash drive of his research into the computer and opens it up. "While you didn't take anything of real import, the fact that you could is very dangerous. You sent my security into fits."

"You don't seem worried about it," he feels inclined to point out.

"Word is that you can be trusted," M tells him. "That doesn't change the fact that this looks very bad for everyone. As much as I might be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, you've incriminated yourself."

That snaps Arthur to attention. "You're not interested in what I found?"

M holds up his flash drive after she ejects it from his computer. "I have what you found, and I'm sure it'll be an interesting read. However, that situation is for me to deal with separately from you. Even if I take your information on your word, I cannot excuse that you broke through my security."

Arthur bows his head and grips the edge of the counter with both hands until his knuckles turn white. He can feel her judgement approaching from a mile off. "Maybe if you looked at it first, you wouldn't have to—" he tried. 

"Mr. Wright, the collaboration between our programs ends today," M cut in smoothly. "Drink your coffee, get some breakfast and pack your bags. It's a long flight home."

After M leaves with the flash drive tucked into her blazer pocket, Arthur pours himself a cup of coffee and sits. He feels wrecked. He's not angry — at least, not at M. He'd compiled the information for Eames to work with, but M having it is even better. He's not even upset that the project is over except for what it means: that he's leaving. He nurses his coffee and tries to feel something other than utterly worthless. His computer pings with a new email — an announcement regarding the premature dissolving of the project due to extraneous circumstances — and he only manages to read the first few lines before Eames walks in.

Apparently having already heard the news, Eames drags a chair over to Arthur's side and slumps into it with an unhappy expression. "Morning," he says. "You were here all night not taking my advice then?"

"Yeah," Arthur answers and neither of them say anything for a few heartbeats. "If you're waiting for an apology, you'll be here for a long time."

It's a twist on one of the first things Eames had ever said to him. Recognizing it, Eames smiles wryly at him. Arthur half expects for him to make a quip, to make light of the situation so that Arthur won't feel like he's so heavy. He says instead: "Mallorie will be upset that you're leaving."

Arthur nods. "I know. I'll miss her too." 

He pushes his coffee away; he's lost his taste for it. Eames is watching him when he turns to look. Arthur wishes they could just do whatever they wanted — whatever jobs they wanted, wherever they wanted, without people telling them it was wrong. As they were now, there would always be their governments between them, demanding a loyalty that Arthur, at least, wasn't feeling much any more.

"I bet you could get the information from M if you wanted," Arthur says.

"Did you want me to do something with it?" Eames asks.

"Just look at it," he tells him. "I don't care what you do with it afterward. It's not like it will help me now, but you should look at it. Especially if you're thinking of working with Worth. Maybe you'll come to the same conclusions that I did."

Arthur can't think of anything to say after that. Eames has made it clear already that he's got what he wanted out of the project, therefore its ending doesn't affect him nearly as much as it does Arthur. Even looking around now, Arthur can't help but wish to stay forever in this place that's allowed him to work as he pleased for such a short while. He'll be back in the States again, back to his cubicle, his small apartment in Ohio, and what little family he has left. It should be comforting in its own way, but Arthur keeps circling around how returning home means doing so without Eames. He guesses that he should be grateful that they at least they have this moment to say their goodbyes.

When he looks at Eames to do that, though, Arthur can't get the words out. He can't say anything. He's stuck looking at Eames' face and his lost, sad expression, and the breath that he'd gathered to speak just flows out of him. 

Eames leans toward him. "Arthur—"

Then the door to the workshop slams open, and Eames retreats just as quickly as Mallorie storms in. "Mr. Wright!" she shouts. "What is going on?"

She's talking about the project and about Arthur going home, but Arthur is caught up in how Eames' profile had closed down as soon as she'd entered. He grabs his cup of coffee and stands to go pour it out. It's cold, he doesn't want it any more, and he should be packing his things for the trip. 

"I'm sorry, Mal," he says, picking up his jacket from the back of his desk chair. "I only just found out this morning, myself. If I knew any details, I'd tell you." She shakes her head at him, curls bouncing around her shoulders. "I have to get ready to leave, so if the both of you could give the others my apologies?"

Mal nods, her brow furrowed with a little confusion. "Of course," she says as she follows him to the door of the workshop. "But we'll get a chance to say goodbye to you before you leave, won't we?"

"If there's time," he agrees and meets Eames' eyes over Mallorie's shoulder, "I'll be glad to have you see me off."

He doesn't get the chance to see anyone. He spends the afternoon packing and signing forms that swear him to secrecy. By the time he's done, he's being swept toward the roof, luggage and all. Arthur has a plane ticket in his coat pocket, and his luggage already being carted toward a large helicopter that will take him and the rest of the Americans to the airport. He half expects M to be there like she had when they had arrived, but she's absent. There are plenty of others present in her stead — mostly security with clusters of dreamers in the European program — but most significantly, there's Eames.

He's standing off to the side, so that he's not in the way of the luggage or the security around the American dreamers. Everyone is sort of getting rushed along, and Arthur wants to step toward him and claim the moment that neither of them had been able to earlier. It would only take a little time to say the proper goodbye that they deserve, but pretty quickly, Arthur's caught by the elbow and directed to get into the helicopter.

Arthur does as he's told, but looks back before he can climb fully into the helicopter. They lock eyes through the throng of people between them just long enough for him to give Eames this playful, mocking salute. In return, Eames smiles — a curl of his mouth that's soft and sweet — and winks. It isn't a great way to say goodbye, Arthur figures, without plans to meet again or some kind of closure, but when he finds his seat in the helicopter, he isn't surprised to find himself pursing his lips against a smile that's bittersweet.

  


**MAGADAN, RUSSIA (JANUARY 2010)**

Eames has been uneasy since the start of this mission.

The orders had arrived in his email without so much of a whisper of a warning. There had been no previous interest in the target they were having him investigate and the information turned up in the background investigation, while detailed and thorough, had been... typical. (Unremarkable, really, is the word to describe it.)

The team to which he’s been assigned is not his usual team, but at least they’re familiar faces that he remembers from Worth’s team — one architect and two forgers, all of whom have sufficient enough training to at least keep up. Russia, too, is an unsettling choice in final destination, but at least Russia has been chosen because that’s where the target’s going, even if that does mean heading to Magadan, quite possibly the source of all winter in the world. But the plan has been made, the dreams have been built, and Eames has uneasily gone along with it.

No forging here. No need for it. He slips into the dream, natural as anything, and wakes up on the other side to a city full of twists and turns. Too many unmarked streets and not enough crosswalks and he’s stuck waiting for the traffic to die down so that he can just cross the goddamn street and get to the cafe, hole up with a chair and magazine and wait for the Mark to show.

Ugh, he hates cities. They’re always this faintly oily grime on all the surfaces, and the air is thick with exhaust and smoke. People stream down the sidewalks on their cell phones and their PDAs but never make eye contact, even when someone is standing so helplessly lost as he is. Give him a cottage; give him a town house; give him a bungalow for fuck’s sake (or a hut, even; he’ll take a hut). All Eames wants out of a home is excellent company and a good puzzle. Cities are mazes and therefore wonderful for extraction and the evasion of projections, but Eames has never been able to feel altogether comfortable in them.

Eames squints up at the sun. It’s not quite London — not quite New York — but some mixture in between. The buildings are tall and stretch forever into the sky like New York, but the feel is all London: broad side walks, random buildings from the olden days buried between walls of glass. The taxis are white. The traffic signal is just a collection of lights blinking red and green and yellow. He stands on the corner of Hope and Lost and wonders if his team is ever going to make an appearance.

It’s right about then that the car hits him.

He isn’t hit too badly. It takes more than this to wake him up these days, but it still hurts like hell. He rolls up the windscreen, off the end of the boot and hits the ground. He’s too winded to do anything more than lie there, gasping and hurting. Maybe it’s because he just got hit by a fucking car that he just turns a wry smile when it’s Arthur and two others that get out of the car and converge on him.

He tells himself that it isn’t disappointment that settles into him when he recognizes Arthur’s face. It’s not like they’re friends exactly, despite their history. Point of fact, Eames could quite easily define their relationship as a loose rivalry. They’re on opposite sides, of course — an unfortunate side effect of birthplace and employment — and they’ve each taken it upon themselves to put in place challenges that the other might not otherwise encounter. It’s been a game; it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been like this.

“Another sneak attack, Mr. Wright? I would have expected something beyond that old trick,” he comments dryly as they grab him under the arms to drag him into the nearest building.

Struggle is expected, so he goes limp in their hold, dragging his heels every step of the way. He expects to be tortured (dreams are good for that — pain being in the mind and all, with nothing but the psychological damage as proof that anything happened at all) but that’s before they dump him into one of six hospital beds in a windowless room.

“Dream within a dream, hm? That’s new,” he comments with just a touch of appreciation when he sees Arthur pull a PASIV case from under the bed. Eames’ body aches, but he still fights when one of the agents grabs his wrist. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you,” Eames grinds out as a square-jawed American cuffs him to the hospital bed. “At least your imagination isn’t failing you, eh, Arthur?”

Despite the slipping out of code names, Arthur is completely impassive, cool and efficient. It is both like and unlike the Arthur that Eames is familiar with. Even when they had been in dreams together before, the repartee had always been present, always sharp and fast and just short of ruthless. Arthur has never been the type of man that succumbed to a sense of urgency, but now his movements as he sets up the PASIV device are fast. Still, those are definitely his fingers, definitely the pattern with which he uncoils the tubing and measures out the Somnacin.

He wonders...

“Has something happened?” he asks, testing the cuffs around his wrists. Arthur barely spares Eames a glance and Eames frowns at Arthur’s lack of response. Rather unintentionally, panic ratchets up in his chest. “What? Cat got your tongue or are you still mad about that thing with M?”

Eames jerks away from Arthur’s hand when he reaches for it, but is stopped short by the cuff. “Why are you doing this? Where is my team? What are you looking for?”

“It’s just business, Mr. Winters,” Arthur says — drawling as if he’s bored. “Nothing personal.” But when he slides the cannula into Eames’ wrist, it still feels like a stab to the gut.

Somnacin is just as effective in dreams as it is up above, Eames finds, and as he feels the sluggishness start to pull him down, he circles around Arthur like a drain, wondering at the inconsistencies and pulling at the uneven texture of Arthur’s personality while he sits, ramrod straight, in his chair.

“Winters.” The door closing behind him makes Eames tense, but the man that swoops around him to the desk is Commander Bartlett. (Good man, Commander Bartlett; always has been, always had his eye on Eames’ progress, always sent the interesting jobs to Eames’ desk just to see what he would do with them. Eames likes him well enough, but doesn’t actually know him, which was a feat in and of itself, considering.) “You’ve been doing good work, Winters. I’m proud to call you one of my agents.”

The hat under his left hand is folded flat, embroidered along the side with a rank insignia. His right hand is flat on his knee, rubbing at the thick material of a uniform that felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“The thing is,” Bartlett continues, folding his hands in front of him. He seems to be weighing his words carefully. “The thing is that the Americans are getting a little restless. Because of that, we’d like you to do this one last mission for us.”

“We?” Eames echoes. Then: “Sir — a last mission?”

Bartlett nods gravely. “I know this will be a lot to ask of you, Winters. You know how much we value your expertise and your pioneering of the PASIV technology. It’s the very depth of that knowledge that makes you imperative for this mission.”

Eames straightens that much more at the compliment. “Yes, sir. What’s the mission?”

The Commander pulls a photograph from the file near his left elbow. It’s big and glossy and perfect. He lays it flat on his desk (solid oak, very sturdy; Eames had kicked it once in a fit of anger and nearly broke his toe for his trouble; Bartlett had looked sympathetic as he’d sent him to the infirmary, and then written him up for disorderly conduct). “There’s a particular American agent that’s becoming somewhat of a problem for us,” says Bartlett and he spins the photograph toward Eames. “I think you’ve had run-ins with him before.”

The image is right from a memory. The slicked back hair, the daring expression around the eyes. The slightest of quirks around the mouth — like he’s smirking at something off camera. Arthur is as clean cut as Eames always imagines he is.

“Ah,” Eames starts — then swallows. With this reveal, Eames is now quite certain of what Bartlett will be telling him to do. “Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, sir. I’ve seen him before.”

Bartlett’s smile is horrifyingly pleasant as he rounds the desk to squeeze Eames' shoulder. “Good, good.” Then, he seems to find something worrying in Eames’ face. “There’s nothing to worry about, son,” he assures Eames. He’s never ever called Eames ‘son’. “It’s just business. Nothing personal about it.” He grabs the rest of the file, tucks the photograph into the folder, and hands it over to Eames. “The details are all inside. Take all the time you need.” He nods to a door to the right. “He’s in the next room.”

“Wha—” Eames stands as Bartlett stands. “Sir, you want me to begin now?”

Bartlett gestures toward the door with an open palm. “If you could.”

“Right,” Eames mutters, looking down at the awful red color of the folder in his hands. He tucks it in at his side and stands at attention. “Will that be all, sir?”

Bartlett nods. “That will be all.”

His salute is snappy. “Good evening, sir.” It doesn’t stop the twitch under his eyes from happening, though. He turns toward the door and does his best not to seem like he’s hesitating to go through it.

Arthur is tied, slumped, in a wooden chair with his back toward Eames. There’s a bag over his head, but Eames would recognize the hard line of those shoulders anywhere. When Eames closes the door behind him, Arthur twists in his bonds, tilting his ear toward the sound. His fingers flex against the rope. It’s more liveliness than Eames thought he might see; he’s unreasonably grateful to notice this. There’s a second chair across from Arthur into which Eames drops the folder. He hasn’t bothered looking past the mission dossier on the first page (can’t think past the details of what's being required of him — every action planned out in exacting, terrifying clarity.) Of the rest of the papers, there’s nothing in there that will help him — nothing in there that he doesn’t already know, probably, and what are details like real names and birthdays when they’ve held guns to each other’s heads?

There’s a PASIV device on a table against the wall in a case that’s shiny and new. Its presence clashes with all the dirty walls, the wooden furniture, the rusted tin box of tools, and the grainy sand that’s scuffing the shine of his shoes. It’s an unwelcome addition to an already unwelcoming room.

Abruptly, Arthur laughs. “Is this the silent treatment?” he asks. “Are you hoping that I’ll tell you all my secrets like this? You’re going to have to dig a little deeper than that.”

Eames runs his hands around the edge of the case. It pops open with two little clicks. Inside, the PASIV is already on and ready for action. The timer is set for half an hour. Eames can do a lot of damage in that amount of time.

“I’m not deaf,” Arthur grates out. “I know you’re here. You can tell your leader — your commander or boss or whatever — that I’m not going to talk. I am a member of the United States Air Force and—”

“Arthur.”

_I don’t want to do this._

Arthur has gone still behind him. “Eames?”

When he turns around, Arthur is turned toward him at a ridiculous angle to listen to his movements through the bag that's over his head. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Arthur pulls himself upright again. It's as if all the fight, all his snappy aggravation, has left him. “Am I being hopeful when I ask if you’ve been captured too?”

Eames walks slowly forward to stand in front of Arthur, noting that he’s tense but doesn’t appear to be panicking or at wit’s end. Steeling himself, he fists his hand in burlap and pulls off the bag. Arthur blinks — not the frantic blink of adjusting to the light, but somehow languid and bored — and his head tilts fractionally forward so that his mussed hair falls into his eyes. This would deceive anyone who was not Eames perhaps, but there is no vulnerability in the action — only sly calculation.

Eames knows how Arthur hates for his hair to be imperfect, and can’t bear to have it in his eyes. He smooths it back into some semblance of order with an unsteady hand. Arthur is quick to mask the complicated look in his eyes, but Eames sees it and snatches his hand back as if burned. He doesn’t want to make this harder than it already has to be for both of them.

_I really, really don’t want to do this._

He turns to the toolkit behind him so he can’t look at Arthur’s face. His hands are still shaky as he moves them over the soft padding around the instruments. His voice, when he finds it, is thankfully steady, but inside his heart is stuttering out — panicking, wishing like mad to be anywhere but here, to feel anything but the bore of Arthur’s gaze between his shoulder blades.

Regarding hope and whether Arthur has too much of it?

“Yes.”

  
  


Arthur hates Russia. As in — he hates being forced to go to Russia to pick up four of America's wayward charges. Tracking them down has been no problem, of course; they hadn't expected to be followed, but there's a long delay between the realization of their disappearance and the actual hunt. Still, it's notable that their movements are a little suspicious — dropping through London for a few days and from there straight to Russia with another name in tow through all the connecting flights.

The building they've holed up in is actually reasonably classy. It might be someone's home and getting in is just a matter of letting his subordinates break and enter in the style for which they're equipped. The sounds of a scuffle are quickly silenced ahead of him. Arthur doesn't worry; his team is well-trained. He takes his time observing his surroundings while the rest of them secure the premises. Inside the building, it's all faded worn rugs over tile flooring; artwork is cracked and dusty to match the dreary, yellowed curtains around the windows. Arthur thinks the layout would normally be tasteful if it hadn't been so clear that the estate hadn't seen the proper care it deserved in years.

"Sir," calls one of the lieutenants. She tilts her head toward one of the doors behind her. "In the dining room."

There are four of them hooked up to a single device with a fifth lying incapacitated on the ground by the door. Arthur makes sure that the head wound he sees isn't any worse than it looks — he's assured it isn't — before moving deeper into the dining room. The PASIV sits on a circular table and the dreamers each have their arms stretched toward it, palm open and fingers limp around the IV lines. Arthur circles around the table as he tucks his gun into its holster. Of the four, all of them are familiar faces and exceptional dreamers, but only one of them stands out with titles like Best and First and Only.

“What are you doing here,” Arthur murmurs as he stops behind Eames’ chair and bends to rub his thumb beside the cannula in the Englishman's wrist. “What are you doing in Russia with four AWOL airmen?”

Eames is supposed to be back in England, though it's obvious to Arthur now exactly who had been picked up in London, and frankly, the others should still be stateside and nowhere near Russia. The others — three men and one woman; a Point Man, an Architect and two Forgers, respectively — are not unfamiliar with the peculiarities of shared dreaming, and working with an agent from another country, up until eight months ago, would have been out of the question. That Eames is hooked up with them at all, when Arthur knows that they're far below the Englishman's normal talent range, is beyond his comprehension.

He shucks off his coat and hangs it on the back of one of the chairs. “A situation most curious.”

It would be easy to just unhook them all and wake them up, but a larger part of him wants to know what's happening. There's no target here; no one who wouldn't be hell to extract. Waking them up now wouldn't answer any questions they might face when Arthur drags them back home.

Arthur takes a few zip ties from the duffel of a younger agent and ties the Architect to his chair. “Keep an eye on him,” Arthur orders as he yanks the cannula from the dreamer’s wrist and claims an empty chair. He nods to one of the lieutenants for them to grab an IV from the PASIV. "Carter, grab a line. No one leaves until we're back. Understood?”

He waits until hears a chorus of ‘yes sir’s before hooking himself up.

Sliding into a dream that’s already in progress is much like opening a book in the middle and starting a story there. It’s like, sure, no one ever really knows the beginning of dreams, but he always seems to hit the ground running, already on the look out. The city is crowded, but no one makes eye contact until he stumbles across one of the agents, who is scanning the crowds from the doorway of a squat building. The action itself is an obvious give away; projections never start looking around them until there’s a problem. Gunning down the agent is out of the question, as impossible as it is to maintain the dream with the dreamer gone, and setting him on the run, free to wreak havoc on the dream with his talent, would just be reckless. Carter, at his direction, takes the agent down swiftly with a shot to the shoulder. He shouts as he twists backwards, and the projections blandly glance down at him as they pass. Arthur sweeps in while Carter drags the agent deeper into the building and closes the door.

It's nondescript inside. Plain walls, plain tables — flat, unappealing color. Altogether lacking in the detail that had been present outside. It's unneeded, he supposes, when the dreamer is fast asleep. He can’t help but react a little when he sees a PASIV device, though — a second one with Eames and the female Forger hooked up and another IV leading to a third, empty hospital bed.

"Keep an eye on things here, Carter," he orders as he grabs up the third cannula that's leaking Somnacin all over the sheets. "Don't let him wake up."

Carter's assuring response is lost in the hazy muddle of falling into a military base — or an approximation of one, though not one that’s familiar to him. All the projections are in uniform and they stream past Arthur without looking at him. As he ventures through it, he passes a door that’s wide open. He happens to glance inside, and the man at the desk looks up at him.

Recognizing the man's face, Arthur stops immediately: “The dreamer, I presume,” and ducks out of the way when the Commander starts firing his weapon.

There's a moment of silence after he's out of sight. Arthur has to strain to hear the rustle of movement as Commander Bartlett tries to find a position from which he can find Arthur. In the meantime, Arthur slides down the wall, to a level that is low and unpredictable. He has no doubts that the Bartlett inside the room is the female Forger from the first dream level, which means that he must be at least somewhat close to Eames.

Drawing his weapon, Arthur twists toward the doorway and falls to his side, firing as he hits the ground. The Glock 17 has a hell of a recoil, even in dreams, jerking against Arthur's grip as he squeezes off a couple lucky shots. Bartlett lets loose a bark of pain as the bullet rips through his thigh and collapses to the floor of his office, finally flickering until the older, wizened features of the Commander melt away into the the elfin countenance of the Forger hooked up with Eames up above. 

“Where’s Eames?” Arthur demands, coming up and stepping down on her bleeding thigh. She bites back a shout as she grabs at his ankle. He aims down at the knee of her other leg with his pistol. “Where do you have him?” She looks confused behind the pain. “Winters!” Arthur snaps and though she doesn’t say anything, her eyes have already given her away.

Arthur whirls in the direction that the Forger’s eyes had darted and leaves her whimpering behind him to reach for the doorknob. He pauses when he hears a scream from within — something high and sobbing — and behind him, the Forger laughs.

The room behind the door is dingy, dirty and altogether unpleasant to look at. A single light hangs from the ceiling, burning dull and yellow between two men — Eames and another Arthur. The light makes Eames look sickly — jaundiced, with blood up one arm and over his chest. Eames’ hands are caked with red, and he’s leaning over the projection of Arthur, hands cupping its cheeks.

He’s saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, god, Arthur, I’m so sorry. Jesus, why did you have to be so goddamn talented—” through wretched tears, voice cracking around the words.

He hasn’t once looked up to see who’s opened the door.

“Eames,” Arthur calls and above his distraught expression, Eames’ brows crease. “I’ve seen enough.”

More than the way the projection of Arthur is lying limp and unresponsive in a chair, the way Eames looks up at him with a mixture of horror followed by sheer, unfettered relief is enough to make him lift his gun (Eames’ gun; the Glock 17 he’d taken in the dream in Myanmar and could never get rid of) and pull the trigger.

He wakes to Eames yanking at the IV tubing to his arm and shouts wordlessly when Arthur reaches for it himself, to do it painlessly. He ends up falling away from Arthur, eyes wide as he tips off the opposite side of the hospital bed and vanishes. By the time Arthur opens his eyes to reality, Eames is already shoving his way through Arthur’s team and disappearing through the door. He’d like to chase Eames down himself, but the way he’d slipped and scrambled away, like he’d been pushing himself with his feet without wanting to use his hands, is telling when paired with what Arthur already knows.

Like the pain of a knife or a bullet in dreams, there are some sensations that take longer to dissipate. Blood — in all its elegant construction — is slimy and warm and altogether unpleasant on the skin. Arthur rubs his fingers together, smearing the psychological feeling away with chilled fingertips. He’d only got a small amount on him, from where he’d grabbed Eames’ arm as he fell — two levels down and coated in the stuff. He can only imagine that the haunted look in Eames’ eyes is because he can’t unsee himself soaked in another person’s life.

He presses a button in his ear piece to speak to the men outside that are probably already chasing Eames down. “Let him go,” Arthur orders.

  
  


To Eames, Russia is still unfamiliar. The language looks right for Russian, but languages always seem that way in dreams, even when they’re truly illegible. The streets are confusing — especially labyrinthine with sheets of icy rain smothering Eames' vision — and the people (strangers) who he walks past on the street — pacing and jerking unpredictably down alleys and into bars — turn to stare at him.

He falls into a dark, narrow club — doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know a single person in this snowy hellhole — and scrambles through the cloying heat of too many bodies and too much alcohol. He stumbles down the stairs in the back of the club and ends up in a room with billiards and fold out tables, where old men cluster around and play poker. (He doesn’t know where these people hide all these places; maybe if he’d gone upstairs he’d have found a garden or a brothel or who the fuck knows — it might be a dream; the Architect could have built anything.)

There’s a payphone at the bottom of the stairs — broken or hacked; there’s conveniently already a dial tone when he puts the phone to his ear. He calls his mother. She’s as terse as he could have wanted when she first answers the phone: “Whoever this is had better have a damned good reason for having this number.”

“Mum.”

She’s startled. He can tell by the way he doesn’t hear the inhale, but instead hears her slow, controlled exhale. She says: “Daniel.” (He maybe chokes a little. He hasn’t been called that in years, it seems.) “Daniel, what’s wrong?”

“You were right,” he tells her. His breath is hot around the words. They’re difficult, but he needs them out — out of him, right now, or he’ll bottle them up forever and no one would ever know. “This dream sharing thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

She’s quiet. It is not a judgemental silence; he knows that sound all too well because they scream louder than anything else in his sordid and variable history. “What do you need?”

He presses his fingers against his eyes, squeezes his nose, and is most definitely not crying. “A lift,” he answers, “if you wouldn’t mind. I’m in Magadan.”

He hears her tut at him — surprise that he even thought he would need to ask her — and it’s the best. “I know.” There’s nothing for a few minutes. He waits there, leaning against the payphone and containing the tremble of his body against the watchful eyes of maybe-projections and listens to the indistinct sound of her voice handing out directions, sharp and uncompromising. “Daniel. It will be a few hours. Can you manage?”

He nods furiously. (A few hours is fifteen minutes in the real world. Of course he can manage, but he’s grateful to think that she would stay on the line with him if he needed it.) “Yeah. I can manage.”

Another noise — hopeful and doubtful all in one go. “Keep a look out for James.”

“Yeah, okay.” (Thank you.)

“And Daniel?” she calls before he can drop the phone from his shoulder. “Stay safe. I hear it gets quite cold where you are.”

Eames is definitely (not) crying. “Will do, mum.”

  
[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595816) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595808) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595816) [](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595830) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595853) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595830)


	11. Chrono 4

**MAGADAN, RUSSIA (JANUARY 2010)**

James is an agent of the highest caliber and with a propensity towards dangerous women and even more dangerous situations. Eames is as familiar with James’ footsteps as he is his own. James is quicksilver, suave, and roguishly charming when he wants to be. His mind is flexible to the situation, cuts through problems like a blade, and his focus is unparalleled. He’s reliable in his own way; Eames can fully depend on him to do his job though it might not be exactly in the way he predicts.

Eames has admired him since they were young, since before he knew what hero-worship meant. He’s emulated him in life and even forged him in dreams. James knows this and, Eames thinks, is probably amused. The point is that he doesn’t have to look up from his shaking hands to know that James is in the doorway. The very air changes around the other agent; it becomes supercharged, electric, but even in this moment, that atmosphere seems muted. When he does look up, James is wearing a parka — puffed white and fur-lined — and he’s holding a second, identical one near his hip.

“Mum sent me,” James says. He doesn’t gesticulate much; Jamie has always been the kind of guy that values efficiency in motion.

Moving seems like such an imposition, but Eames pushes himself to his feet and lets James help him into the parka. The world is fuzzy around the edges while James zips up the coat and then buttons over it, and while Eames is feeling all of five years old again, he lets James silently guide him towards a vehicle that is purring warmly against Russian winter.

“I hope you’re appreciating how much this means I trust you,” Eames mutters when James climbs into the driver’s seat. “Mum, too.”

James ruffles a hand through his hair, and Eames leans into it rather than grumbling. “I know,” James says. His hand drops over Eames’ eyes. “Go to sleep. We'll be home soon."

  


Eames’ mind is built for details. It’s not very orderly, and really, he ascribes the way his mind works as more like a web — fine threads that connect pieces of information so that tugging on one ripples through everything that corresponds. It’s this that’s keeping him from completely breaking down now. He can tug at the details of this mission — how he got to Russia, the names and abilities of the team he’d been working with, the dates of his arrival, the number for his hotel room, and the white car that had always been parked outside his hotel building whenever he came out of it — and everything falls into place except for the mission itself.

Dreams are usually hazy after he wakes up — even the ones through the PASIV. It’s the feelings in them that stick around: phantom pains of injury, the terror of death that crawls up his spine and wraps around his throat, and — if all goes according to plan — the bone-deep glow of a job well done. The feeling lingering in his chest now is muddled, confused, and multifaceted, and in the time it takes James to usher him into a sleek private jet, he remembers two very important details: the second PASIV device and Arthur.

He shifts and James, who is sitting across from him and looking as if flying in style with a champagne flute at his elbow is completely natural, eyes him from over his magazine.

“What are you thinking, Daniel?” James murmurs — not like he’s genuinely looking for Eames to provide an answer for him but like he’s looking for it all on his own, through his observations and knowledge.

Meanwhile, Eames is still pouring over details — the PASIV device and Arthur; Arthur and the PASIV — and there it is: the strings to tug. He pulls gently, more fearful of what he might find than of breaking the connections, and details start spilling out — faces, names, towering glass buildings that don’t exist in reality, the filtered feel of a room, the inconsistencies in Arthur’s personality that had thrown him so easily when he should have been more concerned with the pinch of the cannula in his wrist, the sound of Arthur’s voice shouting at him over (his own) distraught moan...

He says to James: “I think I’m going to retire for a little bit.”

That startles James, though not too visibly; all he gets is a flicker of the muscle in his jaw. It’s enough. James has been there since the beginning, since before Eames had even thought of the military and of dream sharing. He knows even without looking at Eames’ expression (no doubt grave, no doubt pensive) that the idea comes with a staggering amount of regret attached. He might not feel it now, not with Russia frosting over his skin still, not with its cold atmosphere embedded so deeply. Later, after he’s in warm air again and thawed the idea over flame, it will hit him.

James sets aside his magazine and leans forward. “You’re not the type to give up from a single bad encounter.”

“It’s not just a bad encounter,” Eames tries to explain, thinking about the room that had been so tiny, it had been claustrophobic, pressing in at him at all sides until all there had been was Arthur — Arthur and the PASIV. “And I’m not giving up.”

“Really.” James’ expression is mostly blank but for the tightening of his mouth.

“It’s just—.” Eames flounders for words and ends up pressing his fingers against his eyes again, trying to shut out the image of Arthur in that rickety wooden chair, tilted back from the force with which Eames had yanked the bag off his head. He breathes for a second... two seconds, and when he turns back to James, that legendary focus is narrowed right on him. “Have you ever noticed how our lives are slightly surreal?”

“No.”

“Well, they are,” Eames says. “We travel the world in expensive jets and expensive cars and have homes in every major city. We can be anyone — anything — whenever we need to be. I can duplicate twenty different accents. I know we both have an intimate and deeply personal knowledge of weapons and all they can do.” Eames leans forward in a complete copy of James’ posture and drags his hand through James’ hair, digging his fingers into the back of his skull. “With the right technology, I can be inside your mind.”

James’ jaw works around uncomfortably; Eames can tell that he’s trying so hard to understand, that the mimicry Eames has done has subconsciously registered as unnerving, but there’s no spark of epiphany. Though his chest swells with warmth, knowing that James is doing his best to be sympathetic, Eames knows that the next words out of his mouth will not be what he needs.

James edges out the words carefully, neither hiding his opinion on the matter nor being so blunt as to dissuade conversation: “So, you’re thinking something’s wrong with the way we live? It’s just a job, Danny.”

He sighs, “Jamie.” Eames drops his hand, drops his head and sinks back into his chair. “It’s not just a job. It’s a lifestyle. I don't want to quit at all, but after today, I — I have to make a decision about what I’m going to do now.”

The other man braces his head with two fingers to his temple and urges him on: “Tell me.”

James is the kind of man that invites trust. It’s not that he looks like he’s trustworthy — not at all, in fact — but he has an air about him that says that he can understand anything anyone sets in front of him, that nothing is too difficult for him to comprehend, even Eames’ convoluted thought processes. It’s as much comforting as it is terrifying. If he starts divulging now, it has to be all or nothing. If he tried lying, James would just poke holes in Eames' stories until he had the truth.

“You’ve never done it before — extraction or forging?” James shakes his head imperceptibly, confirming Eames’ question. No surprise there; James’ field is far more direct than Eames’ — more prone to visible, newsworthy collateral damage. “It’s an invasion,” Eames says flatly, “and an exploration. In the same way that you discover things about your targets, I do to the people I forge. But it’s deeper than that. I don’t just mimic or mime my way through a job. That would never work. For the duration of a job, I learn the way they think. All their secrets, all their quirks, every minuscule detail of their personality and lives that make them into a unique individual become mine. I become them for as long as I need to be.”

Eames twists a forefinger against his temple. “They’re all in here.”

James is listening, impassive but clearly still interested. Eames knows that James must find this conversation fascinating, but not for the content so much as what it reveals about Eames. They haven’t seen each other in so long that Eames wonders what changes he reveals. James steals a sip of Eames’ drink and lifts his brows at him over the glass. _Do go on._

“There’s a man I forged once,” Eames confesses. “Not a good man or even within the same universe as nice. He’s the sort that likes to see people scream and had been captured by our forces the week before the we were supposed to go after the Mark. He wasn’t pleased with having been taken into custody, but he liked my company and seemed happy enough to tell me every sordid detail of his life.

“I learned every technique he knew and all his reasons for liking the things he did. His reactions to scents and what they reminded him of. The way he favored blades over cruder instruments like pliers.”

Eames takes in a slow breath. “He was an artist just like me, in his own way.

“I only used him once on a job — the following week, when a Mark needed to be convinced to release some information.” Eames licks his lips. “It was both easier and harder than I would have liked.”

When Eames lapses into silence, James changes the way he sits in the chair. He stretches his long legs out until his calf is weighing down Eames’ shin. “So you forged a really fucked up person,” he summarizes. “What does that have to do with Russia?”

“I think he’s bleeding through,” Eames admits, looking at his hands. “The thing about working in dreams — especially being an Architect — is that you’re not supposed to work from memory, not supposed to get too close to reality, because then it becomes too easy to lose track of what’s real and what’s not. It’s dangerous. But that’s precisely what Forgers do. What I must do. It’s easy to get lost, to overlap your dream reality with actual reality and to be unable to keep track of where your fabrication ends and the hidden parts of you begin. That’s why Forgers’ careers are notoriously short. They — _we_... we burn out faster than Architects even. Forgers burn out, get lost, or go entirely mad... or they’re killed because they can’t let go of the forge.

“That’s bad enough — not being able to force yourself back into a shape that resembles the you that you know — but when people start trying to confuse you deliberately, to sabotage you, to plant ideas in your mind...” Eames shakes his head wearily, as if knocking away those implanted ideas, and abruptly changes course, “I'm pretty sure that I hurt someone during this mission and enjoyed it.”

James makes a sound of understanding — the building rumble of _ah, I see_ that says behind a closed mouth — and Eames can tell he’s not humoring him. Then he asks a question that completely blindsides Eames: “Who was it that you tortured?”

He blinks and shrugs, looking away. “He was just—," here, he stumbles. "He's just this American agent.”

Another sound from James — one remarkably similar to Mum’s tut. “For a Forger, you are a horrendous liar. What's his name?”

Eames huffs and swings back around to look at the other agent. "Arthur, alright? I met him during that fiasco in Myanmar—” here, James’ brows lift remarkably high connecting the new name to information with which he’s already familiar, “—and then when our branches were trying to do a little inter-agency cooperation last year, he poached me off of Worth’s team so we could work together.” Eames teases a loose thread from the inseam of his pants and flicks it to the side.

Taking another drink from Eames’ glass, James comments: “He must be an incredibly complicated person to have gathered your interest.”

“That’s just it,” Eames hisses, leaning close. “I know a lot of things about him, yes, but it’s superficial at best. I know how he works — efficient and quick and better than anyone I’ve ever seen. I know how he takes his coffee and the brand names of his suits. I know how he drives and the hotels he likes to stay at during long-haul jobs. But any forge I do of him would be flimsy, a mere reflection of the truth.”

He slumps into his seat. “I know nothing about him.”

There’s a slender smile working under James’s eyes. “How frustrating,” he says in a low faux-concerned tone. “Has Mum met him?”

“Yes,” Eames scowls. “Though not on purpose.”

“And?”

Eames sneers. “She found him absolutely charming, if you must know. Untrustworthy, though, which probably means she considers him to be like a son to her.”

James chuckles. “Well, am I right in thinking that you’re concerned over your behavior toward a projection,” he starts and then makes a vague gesture to the plane around them, “in a dream?”

Stealing back his glass from James’ clutches, Eames’ reply is a dark murmur. “That’s exactly the problem, Jamie. I’m not sure it was a dream.”

**VENTNOR, ISLE OF WIGHT, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 2010)**

Eames’ mother is not waiting at the airport and James does not drive him to Headquarters to her office. Instead, their car arrives at her little white-walled home on the edge of the ocean in South England; it’s a place with which Eames is intimately familiar and is ultimately more wonderful to see than he could have expected. The wheels crunch over a gravel path to the front door, and by the time Eames stumbles out of the car, M is already on the porch, welcoming him into her arms.

“Oh, Daniel,” she croons, squeezing him around the shoulders. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

His voice is muffled against her shoulder. “I don’t know, mum.”

He tilts his nose toward her neck. He can smell her — subtle and distinct and far from softly feminine, but womanly nonetheless (one of her few concessions in a man’s game) — and this is something that few could ever replicate and it serves to pull his feet towards the ground finally. The feel of the rigid posture that can’t fully mask the concern in the slope of her shoulders, the fierce clutch of her fingers against him, and her soothing warmth all start tucking his loose threads back into place, at least marginally.

She cups him around the jaw with both hands, wiping his cheekbones with her thumbs as she looks down at him, assessing and concerned. “Yes,” she says, apparently having found what she was looking for. She tucks his hair neatly behind his ears and smooths down the shoulders of his jacket. “Well, get inside. There’s tea in the kitchen and biscuits in the cooler. Clean up and get changed while I talk to your brother.”

Eames nods and covers her hands with his for a moment before slipping past her. He looks over his shoulder at James, who has their bags looped over one shoulder, and James jerks his head to the side: Go on, don’t worry.

He goes (but he keeps worrying).

  


With a family like his — spies, every last one of them in some form or another, and professional secret keepers — holding onto personal details becomes one of the hardest things to do. For others, it might be strange to know the person who raised you by a single letter, but for Eames, it has always been a kind of comfort. M is and always will be Mum.

Eames is not an Architect. He has the imagination but not the training. Give him images, give him details and memories, and he can create the whole world, but the feel of places, the feel of environments — that’s the tricky part. This place — this home — can be summoned in his mind as easily as breathing, but it will never feel right. Something will be off every single time. Sure, the details will be exact but in his dreams, his childhood home is too empty to be anything other than a glaring fake.

So it’s with trembling gratefulness that he slides his fingers against the walls to either side of him, feeling their grain, ducking under the photographs, and slipping over the sharp cuts in the door frame of the kitchen where he and James had marked their heights. He bends as he peeks into the living area; there — behind the sofa and hidden in the shadow of a wicker table — is a splash of color; it’s faded and most of it is scrubbed away, smeared across the white paint. The sight of it makes Eames smile. (Mum had been horrified to come home at two am to find the two of them crowded together behind the sofa, which had been pushed away from the wall to make room, with packages of snacks and chocolate and a bucket of Sharpies.)

He lingers in the open space, looking out of the windows pointed toward the cove. The light being let in is almost too bright and he has to take a moment to realize that there's just so much vibrancy and color. It's a sharp contrast from Russia — so much that the details sting in his eyes like salt. There are crowds of people on the beach — not many since it's January after all, but fishermen and netters and dedicated sorts — and trees branch in from around the edges of the balcony, stretching around the railings with bare branches. With the onset of winter, the ocean is darkened even in sunlight, a thick stripe of deep color that seeps into the cool, soupy grey of the cove, then the rich taupe of beach sand and then the splashes of color from the beach town along the main road.

Each sight is familiar, achingly so. He knows the rocky edges of the headland and the feel of the beach's rough grain melting into smooth pebbles under his feet. He knows the salt-scents and the heat of summers here. The tight, steeply sloped pathways are ones that he has run down in his youth. He's eaten the fresh crab from Wheeler's and spent long afternoons fighting a losing battle with an ice cream cone while the gulls scream above his head. He lets the memories sink through his skin, feeling more like himself than he has in a long while.

Turning to the kitchen, he finds tea (black leaves blended with strawberries and flowers; mum’s personal blend made at one-hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit and left to cool) and biscuits (shortbread, somewhat hard from sitting in the refrigerator but otherwise fantastic) exactly where M said they would be. He pours himself a cup, scoops brown sugar into it, tucks a few circles of shortbread into his pocket and meanders upstairs.

The stairs are painted white like the walls, but it’s oak underneath. The house is old enough that the paint in the middle of the steps and the top of the railing has started to wear away, revealing the polished wood. At the top of the stairs is the master bedroom and M’s office. Further on is the bedroom he shared with James until they were well into teen-hood (until James had turned eighteen and signed up with the Royal Navy Reserve) and the bath, which he glances into (three toothbrushes are waiting in a holster by the sink; fresh towels are folded on a little table by the tub) but ultimately turns away from in favor of his childhood bedroom.

It... It’s not exactly the way he remembers it (but then memories are funny that way). James’ side of the room has definitely changed — a bigger bed, cream coloured sheets, and a casual suit jacket are hung up on the closet door — whereas his side is relatively untouched. The sheets are a burnt orange and the bed frame is red and everything about it reminds him of his youth. And speaking of...

Eames kneels down and digs around under his bed for a box he knows is there. His fingers catch on a loose floor board and he digs under it, pries it up and reaches into the space underneath for the shoebox. The contents in here are precious in their own way — nothing of value as far as money is concerned, but their worth is undefinable to Eames now.

“Feeling better, Danny?” asks James. He’s braced against the door frame with their luggage in hand; he peers down at Eames, who is sitting on the floor by his bed with a shoebox full of trinkets cradled between his knees, and it seems to take great effort not to look concerned.

“Yeah,” Eames says, nodding. “Much.” He scratches at the side of his leg. “Thanks. You know, for picking me up. I hope you weren’t busy.”

“Tokyo.” He shrugs, takes a few uneasy steps into the bedroom and drops the luggage in the middle of the floor. “It was nothing I wouldn’t have dropped when I got the message.”

Eames sniffs. “I should hope the message was suitably traumatic and terrified.”

James doesn’t comment, but he does reach into the shoebox and pluck a pair of red dice from within. Eames scoops out a pair of cards and a taps the flat of them against a column of chips against the wall of the box.

“Care for a game?” Eames asks and grins when James’ mouth twists. “I can’t imagine that your skills have become rusty with disuse.”

They end up around the table in the kitchen, poker chips stacked on either side. M is dealing; she’s on the phone and her laptop all at the same time, but she still deals their game and slaps the backs of their hands when she catches them cheating. (It’s often enough but not always, and James and Eames will share a look whenever they’ve gotten away with it.)

Between the two of them, Eames has always been the better poker player. James might be able to count his cards and do the statistics in his head as easily as mum, but he reads people like they’re collections of reactions instead of whole, sustainable pieces of Architecture. Eames reads people like books — from beginning to end, indices and appendices and every page in between — and accepts that the cards may change nothing (or everything) about a person’s behavior. James might have a poker face that no one can rival — as expressionless as he can make himself — but Eames has forges for that. Let them see what they want, let them guess, they’ve no idea who they’ve come to the table with, they think she’s just a pair of breasts with long legs, but she’s got a lucky streak a mile wide and—

Eames folds suddenly. James stops smiling and M stops talking and they both turn toward him when he shudders.

“Danny,” James says and lays his hand over Eames’.

“I’m fine.” He grits his teeth. His hands are shaking. “Just ah...” He clears his throat, reaches for his tea, and slides his hand out from under James’. “Just not feeling like myself is all.”

Nothing at all but a woman’s quiet laugh filters through his mind. (Cecile had been a beautiful poker player. She had a way of being just that lucky, just that good and could charm up any player, no matter how smarmy, until they didn’t mind that they were losing and just kept betting higher and higher.) Eames picks up his cards again and fights to spread them in his right hand instead of his left. He flips the top chip from his stack over the fingers of his left hand — over and over and over and under the knuckles and begin again — just to keep from switching the cards. He flips and turns the chip between his fingers; he sweeps his thumb over the grooves and over the raised pattern in the center. It becomes enough that part of his mind is busy building a mental image of the poker chip while the rest of him is still messing with the cards. (Cecile’s urges — to drop the ten of hearts because it’s useless, son, but keep the five and seven of spades — are all but shoved from his mind.)

  


Eames has at least three days on him — far more of a head start than he’d had during Myanmar — but Arthur thinks that has to do with the man he’d seen take Eames into custody. (Custody is such a harsh word. It sounds more official than the way Eames had utterly relied on the other man’s guiding hand would suggest, but everything about that man had class and superior and danger etched into him that all Arthur had been able to think was: special agent.)

Eventually, Arthur tracks Eames to the Isle of Wight, England, to a home parked right up against the beach with trees tangled around its base. There are a lot of buildings built close to the water, including a slew of inns, a diner and a lighthouse, but the white house is the one truly set apart with no discernible path to it that Arthur can see. He keeps his distance and tries not to feel like he’s being obsessive with his rented houseboat and a telescope angled toward the windows of the home, looking for Eames’ broad-shouldered figure shuffling within its depths. There are two patios on the rear of the house — the lower one more obscured by foliage — and floor-length windows along each. He spots Eames once with a box hefted in both arms, walking onto the second floor balcony. He looks well — a little vacant perhaps, and small, buried in a thick coat and scarf, but the panicked man from Russia isn't immediately apparent. Reassured for now, Arthur guides the boat back to the port, planning to be gone the next morning.

Though he’s unable to explain why he feels better for it, seeing Eames alive leaves Arthur satisfied enough that he goes through the motions of arranging for his transport home without complaint. He supposes that it’s just good to know that Eames can bounce back from the man he’d seen slipping and clawing away from the PASIV — from the man that had looked up at him with such horrified shock in the dream before Arthur had woken him with a bullet.

Business accomplished, Arthur heads back to his hotel room ready for a good night’s sleep and ends up jerking his gun from its holster when the light across the room flicks on. His grip tightens around his weapon when he realizes that the woman sitting primly in the chair by the window is the same woman that had interrogated him so thoroughly, but his trigger finger doesn’t so much as curl from where it rests along the muzzle. It’s a good thing that he’s been trained so well, he supposes, or else there might be a mess of a situation whenever the muzzle of a gun presses against the back of his skull.

“Drop the gun, if you please,” says the low, gravelly voice of the man behind him. Arthur does as he’s told, letting the gun slip from his grip and swing from his thumb. “Hands up.” The man takes the gun from his hand and tucks it into his pocket before nudging him forward. “After you.”

Keeping his hands up, Arthur nods politely to the woman in the chair. “M,” he greets and can’t help but notice the way the gun presses that much harder into his skull.

She inclines her head. “Mr. Wright,” she says, waving the agent behind Arthur off. “Or should I call you ‘Arthur’?” She is not smiling. “You get around quite a lot, don’t you?” She indicates the bench at the foot of Arthur’s hotel bed. “Have a seat. Let’s chat.”

The agent pushes Arthur onto the bench with a hard hand to the shoulder, and Arthur snaps a, “This seems familiar,” at her before shooting the man a sour look.

He stifles his double-take, recognizing the agent as the same one that had picked up Eames. His dirty blond hair has the same cut as Eames and his blue eyes are so close in expression to Eames’ grey that Arthur’s mind starts going through leaps and bounds before he can help himself.

M interrupts his thoughts. “What are you doing here, Arthur?”

“Vacation,” Arthur tells her mildly, still looking at the agent (at the age lines around his mouth, at the way he tucks his hand into his pocket like he’s not completely on edge). “I like the beach.”

She folds her hands across her lap. “Arthur,” she scolds. “Don’t pull that shit with me.”

Arthur turns toward M with a slight smile — vaguely flirtatious. “The view from this room is spectacular.”

Her mouth twitches — amused, but not impressed. “Yes, I suppose an agent like you would think so, seeing as you’ve been snooping around one of my agents a little too closely.” Her back settles against the chair firmly, shoulders squared off. “What is your interest in Winters?”

It’s the look in her eyes more than anything else that has him saying, “Eames is here?” in a faux-casual tone and when her eyes narrow at him in the same calculating manner that he remembers, he continues: “How unusual. Last I heard, he was on a mission in Russia. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“We have no agents in Russia,” M says very flatly. Arthur is sure this is the platform of her defense. No one was in Russia; nothing happened in Russia — but something had and Arthur may have to be the one to figure it out.

“If you had, then you would know what I want with Eames.” He can’t help but eagerly await her answer; she has yet to cease surprising him with her ability to turn his words back against him. It’s with pleasure that he watches her bristle slightly before she glances sharply to the agent looming so casually at Arthur’s shoulder and back to his face. (He’s hit a nerve then. Excellent.)

“Mr. Eames is granted more latitude than your average agent, Mr. Wright — as you well know.” Her meaningful look spoke of inter-agency paramilitary actions that required more paperwork than toppling most South American governments ever had, with twice as much blacking out. (Not that either type of file would be released — blacked out or not.) “What interests me is what business you might have had in Magadan, and whether I should shoot you now or later.” Her voice is crisp and cold — as if shooting him was a foregone conclusion.

Having barely escaped such a fate the last time they’d met, Arthur picks at the possible ways in which he can reply. It's no surprise to him that she knew where he'd flown in from, especially when she found out he was here at all. It's hard to trust her with his thoughts considering everything that had happened in London, but if Eames trusted her enough to run to her for sanctuary... 

“Eames is a superb agent,” he admits slowly. “Under normal circumstances, it might be easy to lose track of him for months at a time. However,” he stresses and this time, it’s the agent at his shoulder that shifts from one foot to the other, leaning away from Arthur (reexamining him, likely). “However,” he continues, “with the proper resources and information, having him drop off the face of the planet, even for a few days, becomes disconcerting.”

M’s expression barely changes at his confession, layered though it is, but he recognizes it in the softening around her eyes and mouth. (He remembers that same expression being tilted toward him from a very different face, but the subtle changes are the same and Arthur wonders...)

“Yes,” she agrees with some gravity. “That can be...” She pauses, choosing her words carefully before deciding on: “...unsettling to those with a vested interest in his well-being.” There's another glance at the agent, who remains stonily impassive at the proceedings. "Let's make one thing clear, Mr. Wright. I don't trust you, and however much Eames might deny it, you are part of the problem he's dealing with now. I'll be damned to let him face it alone when I can give him one better."

  


M takes him to the white house on the beach. It's crowded in by trees and guarded by a fence that comes up to Arthur's waist. The road to the house is tight, with barely enough space for the car to turn onto the gravel path to the narrow porch stretched across the front of the house. He takes the time to get a good look at it while the agent (James, he's learned) and M lead him in.

The house is worn but mostly in good repair. The paint is peeling at the edges of every corner and the garden is overgrown with vines and untrimmed bushes, but the stairs don't squeak under his feet and the front door barely complains when James opens it. It's a very normal looking place, he decides as he takes in the tan sofa and the glass coffee table decorated with a flower arrangement and books. The floor plan is open with a clear sight from the front door through the living room to the kitchen, and though the house seemed crowded from the outside, the windows overlooking the water let in so much light that Arthur hardly feels it.

"So," Arthur starts, turning in the middle of the foyer as he drops his coat to his elbows. He folds it and sets it over the back of one of the chairs. "What is this place? A safe house of some kind?"

"No," answers M with a serious depth to her voice as she steps past him to the kitchen. "It's his home."

Arthur's eyes dart around him immediately, picking out the details he'd ignored on the initial glance. There are small, framed photographs spread across tables everywhere, cataloguing Eames' growth through his childhood years, and Arthur can't help but get a closer look at them. This is the history that he's been unable to find all this time, no matter how hard he's dug — Eames as a budding artist and a playful boy, Eames in his school uniform, and Eames glowering with his casted wrist flung around the neck of an older boy with bright blue eyes. 

Brothers, Arthur thinks as he picks up the photo to look at how the two boys are up in each other's space, scratched up from what was probably a fight and Eames looking worse for the wear because of it.

"He was very rambunctious when he was younger," comments James from behind Arthur's shoulder. "He hasn't changed much."

"I can't imagine he has," Arthur replies, setting the frame down again.

As he gathers his coat to hang in the closet, Arthur wonders if it's really a smart idea to be here. Even with London behind them like bad blood, he's uncertain about what kind of welcome he'll receive. The dream level he'd seen in Russia isn't exactly the hope he'd like to have on his side, but it's the best he's got. 

M makes a tray of tea and sandwiches and pushes it into James' hands. "It's past lunch," she says, lifting her chin toward the stairs. "You know where he'll be."

James nods, adjusting the tray in his hands. "Mum." He snags Arthur's attention as he starts upstairs. "Hey, I'll show you the way."

The way is upstairs and through the bedrooms to the balcony. James walks quickly, and while Arthur is keeping pace, he manages to recognize some of Eames' luggage sitting at the foot of one of the beds. He spins as he walks, trying to file away the details he sees — the color of the bedspread, the solid wood framing, and the closet door that's ajar to show packed clothes and boxes.

Past him, well onto the balcony by now, James is making his greetings. "Mum sent lunch."

"Wonderful," comes from Eames. It's enough to make Arthur turn from the bedroom and look for himself if Eames is really as bad off as he's feared. Eames reaches to help steady the tray as James sets it down. "I'm starved."

Eames is in a heavy, black sweater with a collar high around his neck. It narrows down his shoulders and hides away any lines of tension there might be. He moves easily enough, though, without hesitation or reserve, and when James tells them that there's a guest, Eames is wearing a smile as he twists in his seat to look.

His expression falters when he recognizes Arthur, and there's a quick, accusing look shot in James' direction. "What's this then?" he asks.

"M's idea," James explains, shrugging. "We thought it might help."

Arthur steps forward as James leaves, apparently content to let the two of them solve the situation on their own. "I'd leave," he offers, "but the damage has already been done." Even if he left now, he would probably have more details on Eames' childhood than any other dreamer in the world. "I just wanted to check on you."

Eames is usually capable of hiding whatever he's feeling behind a projected facade, but as Arthur comes closer, there's nothing masking the way Eames eats up his every move. As usual, Arthur itches with the knowledge of being observed so closely, but even then, he knows that Eames' gaze carries a different purpose than it had in London. Where before it was about digging out fresh details, mindlessly invasive and shamelessly curious, it's lighter now — like Eames is breathing in his superficial qualities just for reassurance.

"I'm fine," Eames says, "so really, you can leave."

Pulling out one of the chairs next to Eames, Arthur sits. "Funny how M gave me the impression that I wasn't allowed to leave until she let me."

"Not in so many words, I imagine," Eames grouses as he pushes the tray of tea and sandwiches to the side in favor of a box of trinkets. 

Arthur chooses one of the teacups from the tray. It's already gone cool in the winter air, but it feels good to drink it. It gives him something to do with his hands anyway. "Do you want to talk about what happened in Russia?"

"Not especially," he says as he digs out several items from the box and sets them aside — dice, poker chips, coins, a pocket watch, and a small tool set. "Plus, it's not really any of your business, now is it?"

"Eames—"

It's not true. They both know it's not true because Arthur had found a projection of himself in Eames' dream — a projection that was dead, that had been killed for whatever reason. If the dreamers Eames was dealing with had been attempting anything like what Arthur suspects, then it had everything to do with Arthur. Eames can't possibly be expecting him to believe otherwise.

"I've talked about it already," snaps Eames, not looking at Arthur at all now as he turns the pocket watch over in his hands. "To M and to James. It's got nothing to do with you."

"There was a projection of me down there," Arthur argues. He sets aside his tea and leans toward Eames like being closer would somehow press his point. "When you ran, you were running from me."

Eames is quiet for a while, but still avoiding eye contact. He opens the tool set at his elbow and finds a slim flat head to pry open the back of the pocket watch. There's an inscription on the inside that he runs his thumbs over, but Arthur can't read it. Picking up a very slender screwdriver, Eames seems intent on taking the watch apart, but he just sits on the verge of moment, intense and rigid and radiating frustration.

"It's not you," Eames repeats. This time he lifts his eyes in sections — touching base at where Arthur sits, to his hands, to his shoulders and then finally to meet Arthur's gaze. His look is tentative. "This is no one's fault but my own."

"If you're sure," Arthur hedges and shifts to rise from his seat.

He lays a comforting touch to the back of Eames' hand before rising, however, and Eames jerks away as if stung. While Arthur arches a brow, more certain than ever about his decision to stay if he's needed, Eames leans to the far side of his seat and covers his eyes with his hand for a moment, rubbing at his face.

Arthur's hand still rests on the table after Eames had jerked away from it. "Nothing to do with me, does it?" 

"I didn't mean it," Eames starts. His expression is perfectly apologetic. 

"It'd be easier if you just told me," Arthur argues reasonably. "It's not as if I didn't see the dream for myself. One more person won't make much difference, will it?"

"Arthur." 

The way Eames says his name is like he thinks it will make Arthur back off. It's cute — really. The fact of the matter is that Arthur only wants to push harder the more deeply Eames digs in his heels. It only seems fair to tell him so.

"I'm not going to leave until I'm sure you're well," Arthur says.

Eames' mouth purses thoughtfully. "Your government won't approve. Shouldn't you be reporting about Russia?"

"I'll fax it to them." Or he'll email it. Whatever way he needs to if that's Eames' only concern. "I'll put in for vacation time, too."

"If they don't give it to you?"

Arthur clenches his teeth and doesn't tell Eames that he'll be considered AWOL or that he'd probably be tried for treason upon returning to the States. "I won't leave, Eames."

Eames' shoulders go slack at Arthur's words. It's as if the tense cords running through them have been suddenly cut. Arthur wants to reach out and squeeze those shoulders — to reassure Eames of his support if nothing else — but he's afraid of another rejection. He knows that Eames is the type to make his own way; it's one of their many similarities, but here and now, when Arthur knows that he might be able to help, he wishes it weren't the case.

Shivering with sudden awareness of the temperature, Arthur turns his hand over on the table. It's just an open palm — empty but welcoming. It takes a long moment, during which Eames seems to consider the offer that Arthur's implying. Then, finally, he covers Arthur's hand with his. It's just a quick squeeze of his fingers before he slides away, but Eames is gathering up his spread of trinkets into his box — except for the poker chip, which goes into his pocket — and putting Arthur's teacup on the tray. It's Eames saying, "Let's go inside and talk," as he ushers Arthur onto his feet.

It's a start.

  


When they gather downstairs, M and James are gone. Arthur is a little grateful because he isn't sure how he would deal with an audience for the story Eames dishes out. He had expected that Eames' descriptions would include a little fighting and the confusion that came with facing a forgery of his commanding officer. That's not the problem, it's everything else.

Eames hands him little details Arthur couldn't have guessed. He talks about the the forge of Arthur from the first level and how it had been the miscalculated forgery that had been Eames' first clue that something was wrong. He starts to falter, though, when he talks about the second level.

"Looking at it logically, I knew it had to be a dream," Eames says. "I've never worn a uniform. But it felt — Bartlett was so close to how I remembered him and so what if I've never heard him say a certain thing? Maybe I misremembered. The human mind is so fickle. And then there was you. Or a projection of you and you were so —" He waves his hands and looks away from Arthur, lips drawn into a grimace. "The projection was very solid." 

Arthur looks at Eames while he searches for words to describe the projection — really looks at him. Eames, while having never been the type to dress fanatically well, has always been clean cut. Though he hadn't noticed it while they were outside, Arthur can see now how haggard he looks — like he hasn't bothered taking care of himself while he's been sorting through the last few days. While Eames falls silent, Arthur silently makes plans to make him shave tonight and maybe to give him a hair cut. It's not much, but it's a place to start. Maybe Eames will feel better knowing that there's someone handling the details of normal life; maybe knowing will let him focus.

Eames' voice is soft as he asks, "Arthur, what do you think?"

"You don't sound confused," is what Arthur says, and it's true. 

As far as he can tell, Eames has picked through all the possibilities of Russia and laid them out. When he looks at Eames, he doesn't see someone who is looking to be led by the hand to sanctuary. He has been and always will be someone Arthur recognizes as owning a great deal of intelligence, someone capable of incredibly quick thinking and even faster adaptation.

Eames is nodding, though, as he digs the poker chip out of his pocket. "I don't feel confused," he says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He bows his head and rubs the back of his neck, fingers sliding through hair that's getting too long now. "In fact, I'd say that's part of the problem. I should be confused. I shouldn't — I shouldn't have this thought in my head that screams for all of this to just stop."

"What do you mean?" Arthur asks. "Stop what?"

"I want to stop dreaming," intones Eames, rubbing a thumb over the poker chip in slow circles. Arthur balks at the very suggestion. The idea of Eames leaving the business for whatever reasons is laughable. "I can't think of why, really, except that the idea scares me."

The matter-of-fact quality in Eames' voice doesn't fit with his words. Arthur has to comment, "I've never known you to be scared of anything."

He's known Eames to be calculated — with a tendency toward thinking fast on his feet. There's a good dose of caution, too, but it's never been about fear so much as wanting to be sure he's heading in the right direction. That Eames fears dreaming of all things is strange.

When Eames looks at him helplessly, Arthur starts talking about the only thing that immediately comes to mind. "Have you ever heard of inception?" he asks.

Inception isn't something that's used practically. It's still something that's only talked about in a purely academic manner. It stems from the idea that, if ideas could be extracted from the mind, ideas could be put in the mind. It's proposed uses have been from the purely intellectual insertion of languages, maps, and skill sets, to something far more ephemeral in the desire to turn people away from their addictions. There's been the less innocuous talk of implanting memories, of course, but Arthur's never heard of anyone trying to use inception in the real world.

"I've heard of it," Eames answers and then tilts his head as he considers the possibility. "You're thinking that's what this is?"

"Well, you said yourself that you weren't confused, but you feel like you should be," Arthur points out. "You said that you're scared, but you can't tell me why or what of. You're an amazing dreamer, Eames. I can't think of anything that would make you turn away from that."

"It's not so easy as all that," Eames argues, and he slides his poker chip to his left hand. "I'm split. I love dreaming and I want to keep on dreaming, but the other side of me is so scared. It's not even that I'm having trouble with reality any more. I know where I am and I know how I got here and I'm fine. But it's like — it's like you walk in the room and all of that goes away." His eyes plead with Arthur for understanding. "I know you're real. It's not like I don't," Eames continues. "But whenever I see you, I see the projection and—

"I killed you, Arthur. Do you understand that? _I killed you_ and then you shot me and then I was waking up to you again and again. How am I supposed to dream again when I know you're dead?" Eames scrubs his hands through his hair and then finishes, fiercely while his hand clenches around the poker chip like it's a life line: "Why should I bother waking up when I can't trust myself to know if you're real?"

Eames curls into himself after he's spoken, and while he doesn't do anything but stay like that, breathing quiet and deep as he squeezes the back of his neck, he looks like he'd break apart at any moment. Arthur pushes himself from his seat and stands in front of Eames at a complete loss at what to say. He puts a hand on Eames' arm and rubs it in an attempt to be comforting. Arthur's more than a little grateful that Eames doesn't flinch from his touch this time; it makes it easier to go from touching his arm to touching his shoulder. He wonders if that would be all it takes. Eames has been careful to avoid touching him ever since Arthur had arrived, but he leans into it now for support.

Ever since Arthur slipped into Eames’ dream in Myanmar, chasing risk and taking a chance and finding a brilliant opportunity laid before him, he’s always thought he left Eames in the dust, left to scramble after him in the wake of glory. Upon closer inspection, however, he finds that as much as that’s true — as much as he’s got that shining victory to his name — Eames’ reputation continues untarnished, and instead of Eames coming after him, it’s Arthur who's desperate to keep track of where Eames is and what he's doing at all times. He calls it professional curiosity, says that it’s better to know what the best are up to than to be caught unawares, and lately, he's had more reason to be grateful for his own, obsessive interest. He’s glad for it — glad — now that he has Eames back under his observation, quite real, quite alive, and broken open in a way that Arthur has never been privy to.

It's because he prefers his Eames whole that he asks, hoping that there's an answer waiting to be plucked, "What do you need me to do?"

Eames opens up the wall of his arms and brings Arthur into a hug. It's only the one arm that wraps around Arthur's waist, while the other hugs up near Arthur's hip, flipping that poker chip over his fingers. Arthur ends up standing there sort of awkwardly for a second, before dropping to the living room floor.

"Hey," he says and covers Eames' fidgeting fingers with his own. "I don't know what to do, so you've got to tell me. How can I help you, Eames?"

“Prove to me this is real,” says Eames, looking miserable and uncertain. “Arthur—”

He moves before he can even register making the decision, cupping his hands around Eames' jaw. Arthur rubs his thumb over the tight muscle of his cheek, at the rough heat below his eye, at the salt gathered at the corners. Eames shudders, sags and leans into the curve of Arthur’s hand. His lashes brush over Arthur’s thumb; his nose slides over the heel of his palm; he breathes slow and deep at Arthur’s wrist, taking in his scent.

“Feels real enough, doesn’t it?” Arthur asks. His voice feels thick — too big for his own throat — and comes out quiet. "Don't I feel different from a projection?"

Eames nuzzles into his hand — lips over the pads of his knuckles, breath between his fingers, the barest hint of beard under Arthur’s little finger — and it seems natural for Arthur to tilt his hand to cup Eames’ chin, to press his thumb under his lower lip, to rest at the corner, to watch intently, helplessly as Eames looks at him—

—to lean in and kiss him, swift and chaste.

Arthur pulls away almost as soon as their lips meet — stunned at his own behavior, at risking this at the height of Eames’ vulnerability — but a needy little sound slips out from Eames, who has his head turned to accommodate the kiss. He doesn’t chase after Arthur, though the poker chip slips to the floor from his trembling fingers. Eames’ tongue sneaks out — tracing his lips. It isn’t meant to be seductive, but it’s hard not to respond to it; Eames is focused on memorizing the feel of him, the taste of him, and it tugs at Arthur’s desire to be known.

Eames looks at him with the same focus that he remembers from London and Arthur feels like he’s being taken apart from the inside out. Then Eames laughs and echoes Arthur's previous words as he reaches for him. “Real enough,” he says, amazed and mocking and with a level of disbelief Arthur’s never heard from him.

Eames’ face, when Arthur sees it before it’s tucked into the line of his throat, is drawn in lines of fear, brittle and close to breaking, and Arthur strokes his hand over Eames’ neck, over his shoulder and up to his ear. He makes Eames look at him, turns that frightened face toward him.

Eames doesn’t do reckless — at least, not without purpose. Every leap that looks spontaneous is actually well thought out and planned for in advance. So when Eames kisses him — lips shaking, chaste still, and somehow feeling even more intimate for the weakness it implies — Arthur knows that he means it. When his arms tighten around Arthur’s ribs to bring them close, it is because Eames has found meaning — either solution or salvation — and Arthur, as cautious and wary as he usually is, trusts the intention easily.

His touch is firm — neither gentle nor harsh but very much there, mapping out the topography of his body with every slide of his palms over Arthur’s back, under his shirt and over his shoulder blades. Arthur pulls his shirt off and Eames’ fingers press over his vertebrae and into the muscle of his arms. Eames’ eyes are closed — feeling over Arthur’s body blindly — and Arthur wonders if he’ll see a forge of himself one day, if Eames could reproduce him by touch alone. His fingertips dip into the hollow of Arthur’s elbow as he makes his way down his arms; then their fingers are laced, the back of Arthur’s hand against Eames' palm.

“You were cold,” Eames murmurs then frowns, like he got something wrong. “When the forge of you put me under, his hands were cold.” He kisses Arthur’s fingers and continues by saying: “Everything about him was ice.”

Arthur loops his free hand behind Eames’ neck. If he could, Arthur would wipe away every memory of Russia from Eames’ mind because of the hesitancy he feels in the other man’s body. The Eames he knows has never held back from inserting himself into Arthur’s personal space. To see it now rips at him.

“Come here,” he tells Eames and this time, kisses him hotly, with an open mouth and a warm tongue. There’s nothing chaste — nothing cold — about this kiss at all.

He feels under his mouth that hesitation — the stuttering movement of Eames’ lips alongside the tightening of his fingers around Arthur’s. He pushes harder than maybe he should because of it, but Eames surrenders under the assault as a result, coming to life with movement when before he’d been too still, too observant to be responsive. He surges to meet Arthur halfway, groaning in relief, and his body rolls into every touch like it’s all he can do to solidify the truth of this moment.

“If my mind is going to second guess itself,” Eames says after Arthur has folded them toward the ground, while he’s pressing kisses to Eames’ chest between the buttons of his shirt. He trails off, but Arthur can read what he meant to say in the way he forces Arthur’s touch to be harder, for his kisses to be that much more cutting.

Let my body remember the feel of reality.

If Arthur’s hands seem reluctant to bruise, it’s only because he isn’t the type to hit people when they’re down. If Arthur doesn’t leave marks with his mouth, it’s because he’s been trained out of leaving behind proof of his activities, especially ones as lascivious as this. It certainly has nothing to do with the way it makes Eames noiselessly present his yearning for Arthur to see. It definitely has nothing to do with his own desire to make this moment into something real without having to resort to putting evidence on Eames’ body. He hopes that the heat is enough, that the touch is enough, that Eames won’t rise in the morning looking for the yellow-green tint at his hips and be disappointed or worse — even more certain than before that he’s slipping down the most treacherous slide a dreamer could have built.

  


A week passes before Arthur starts feeling like it might be okay for him to consider returning to the States. He's a little reluctant to leave, though it has very little to do with the slew of emails sitting in his inbox. Most are from his commanding officers or from their commanding officers, and they all tell him that he's required to attend this meeting, or that, to discuss his behavior. Returning now would mean a trial, probably a conviction and jail time if they think his going AWOL is more punishable than their need for his skill set. He doesn't mind going to jail, honestly, though he doesn't think it's going to happen. Even if it did, he reasons, it would have been worth it to know that Eames is doing better.

Eames has only just latched onto the idea of a totem, having recalled the spinning top that Mallorie had created in London. They've spent their time attached at the hip, touching frequently for reassurance and comfort, and gradually it's become something they do out of desire rather than requirement. He seems to have made his decision about reality, about Arthur, and frankly, Arthur isn't entirely sure if anything he's done has helped him toward that. It doesn't matter how they got here in the end. Arthur's just glad that those uncertain looks of Eames' — the ones that linger over Arthur, picking for details that separate him from the projection from Russia — have become less frequent.

No, his reluctance has nothing to do with Eames — at least, not because Arthur's afraid for him. His reason for not wanting to leave is much more visceral. It is because of Eames or, more correctly, what it's been like with him. It's been fascinating, really, experiencing his thought process in a way that London had not been able to afford. 

England had been about posturing as much as it had been about learning. There, Eames had kept most of his thoughts to himself, and then they'd been cut short besides. Here, especially due to the circumstances they were dealing with, Eames hadn't held back. He'd let words flow from him like water and thoughts burst from him, like he just had so much in him and so many ways in which he'd poured over his experience in Russia that he couldn't keep them all straight. 

Arthur likes that sort of thing. He likes being the guy who people bounce their thoughts off of until the ideas became something more solid. He's a Point Man. It's his thing. While he felt a little helpless dealing with something so new, so theoretical, the drive to find a solution meant that he always had Eames talking to him and that every moment meant that Eames was revealing more about himself. 

The longer that Arthur thinks about leaving, the more it means leaving behind a method of problem solving that is intimate and instinctive. It sucks, but Eames gets closer every day to finishing his totem and settling into himself. Arthur is becoming useless. Despite the trust with which Eames — and by extension, M and James — hold him, he's still a guest here. 

He really should leave.

Arthur finds Eames in the garage, cutting a circle out of a slim piece of metal. Eames is focused on his task, but his body barely does anything but twitch a little when Arthur rests a hand along the slope of his back. Arthur waits while Eames compares the metal circle to the size of his poker chip before speaking.

"I need to go home."

Eames turns around in his seat and sets aside his soon-to-be completed totem. When he stands, he's almost chest-to-chest with Arthur and practically of height. Eames takes Arthur's hands in his and rubs his thumbs over the knuckles.

With a soft smile, he leans in to press their foreheads together and says, "I think I saw this coming." He kisses Arthur's forehead and lingers there. "Your government won't be too happy, I suspect."

"No," Arthur agrees. "They'll probably try to make my life miserable for a while. They don't take too kindly to deserters."

Laughing, Eames laces their fingers together. "I'll be glad that you stayed with me as long as you did," he says. "Are you leaving now?"

Arthur nods and glances toward the door. "A taxi should be arriving any minute."

Eames takes advantage of Arthur's distraction to gather him up in his arms. It's a little awkward with Eames' arms wrapped around his ribs and him being forced onto his toes to hug Eames around his shoulders, but it feels good to be enveloped by warmth and to feel Eames' broad hands stroking over the length of his back. It's not Arthur's fault at all that he buries his nose into the crook of Eames' neck to breathe him in. He just wants the memories of this moment for the future.

Eventually, Eames lets Arthur find his feet again. He kisses Arthur's cheek affectionately, and a warm shiver spikes over Arthur's spine. "I'll see you around," Eames says, thumbing at Arthur's jaw, "Mr. Wright."

There are a lot of things that Arthur wants to say in the quiet that lies between them, but it doesn't seem right just yet. He takes a step backward and then another, watching Eames' gaze follow him as he leaves. It's not a goodbye, Arthur tells himself when he finds himself in the taxi to the airport. 

It's a promise for later.

  
[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595828) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595808) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595816) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595828) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595853) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595853)


	12. Chrono 5

**CORUMBA, BOLIVIA (NOVEMBER 2010)**

Arthur's on the run, but has managed to hide out without too much trouble. It's not his first job after his discharge from the Air Force, but after the day he's had, he's beginning to think it's the last job he's going to want for a good long while. A lot of jobs go south in the world outside of the military — a great deal more than Arthur had expected. People are expected to do their jobs in the real world, of course, but the loyalty to service and teamwork found in military organizations doesn't translate to the work ethics of regular people. Illegal dreamers aren't used to the kind of precision and efficacy that Arthur prides himself for having. It's what makes Mr. Wright such a valuable identity. 

Unfortunately, that same value has seemed to garner a lot of ill attention, and frankly, Arthur would sooner take the bad mouthing and snubbing from military coworkers than deal with the heavy-handed retaliation of rival dreamers. Worth may have thought him competition once upon a time and proven to be a spectacular pain in the ass, but at least he'd never tried to _actively_ kill Arthur.

At least he has the hope that Eames has made it out okay. Without time to arrange for a meet-up, Arthur can't know for sure where the Forger has managed to hide or if he's been captured, but neither can he go out and hunt him for himself. It leaves him worried and frustrated and restless, which are pretty much the standard three emotions Eames leaves him with on a daily basis, now that he thinks about it.

So he paces along the walls of an abandoned motel with a broken door and no electricity. It's a hole in the wall, but he has some of his things for company — his laptop with a dying battery, a prepaid cellphone, and his gun. The PASIV device is gone unless Eames has somehow managed to grab it from the hotel room. He'd like to be spending his time planning a get-away, but he won't until Eames is either with him again or found dead. In the meantime, he paces and waits.

Night is falling on the third day after the job bust when a card pops through the crack under the door. It's a welcome and familiar sight, even if the fast steps running off on light, nimble feet definitely don't belong to Eames, and Arthur scoops it from the floor immediately. It's an invitation — simple and to-the-point — in Eames' distinctive script telling him "Rua Delamare and Rua Vinte e Um de Setembro. 3am; tonight." 

It's dangerous idea to venture out, but Arthur trusts the source of the summons. Refusing to go isn't an option Arthur even bothers to consider.

  


The suit Arthur's wearing hasn't seen a good cleaning for the three days he's been in hiding. With all of his extra clothes left behind in the haste of flight, he’s starting to look rumpled in a vagabond kind of way. There are blood stains on the jacket and plenty of soot from the explosions, but he's cleaned up as best he can. Suspicion isn't what he needs to gather right now, and he can be grateful for his luck.

Walking quietly and smoothly in the long shadows of the alleyway, he presses close to the cool brick wall, and pauses to peer around the corner. He can admit to being a little twitchy, but also thinks that there's no such thing as too much caution when there are people looking for his blood. Footsteps on wet pavement make him slow down so that he can find the source. Mirroring and hiding behind the slap of shoes against the street, he withdraws into the deepest shadows of the alley and watches the drunken man amble past. 

The intersection that Eames has directed him to is incredibly open and unpopulated. It makes Arthur nervous just looking at it. Despite that, he slides out of the alley to the street and straightens his jacket as he takes a look around. Taking care to remain masked in shadow — hand ready to reach for the holster behind his hip if need be — Arthur sees exactly who he's expecting.

Eames lounges casually in a flood of streetlight, clear for all to see, his back against the lamp post as if he's merely waiting for a cab to pick him up after a late night of drinking. Somehow, Arthur isn't surprised at his reckless bravado. The light throws his form into sharp definition, even from this distance. He's the picture of relaxation — cigarette dangling from his lips, with smoke curling around his head and hanging in a haze in the light. Eames' rumpled, sorry excuse for a tourist's shirt — horrendous floral pattern and all — and his glaringly obvious Panama hat are a bit wilted around the edges. Arthur walks slowly closer, sticking to the walls of the building behind Eames' back. Stopping at the border of the puddle of light, he hesitates.

“Don't be shy, darling. I won't bite — not even a nibble.” Eames turns his shark smile fully towards Arthur and tucks his hands into the pockets of his khakis, insolent and taunting.

Arthur's lips curl wickedly in the gloom. “What if I ask nicely?” He can't hide the flirtatious tone in his voice or the unfettered relief he feels seeing Eames okay.

“Don't be a tease, Arthur. I might take you seriously and have my heart broken, hmm?”

“You might be surprised.” Arthur finally drops his hand from his holster and reaches instead for his cigarettes. "Now, come on. We shouldn't be out like this."

  


In the time they've been apart, Eames has managed to secure a few of items of import along with a shabby motel room on the edge of the city: a few sets of clothes for each of them, the PASIV, and two train tickets to freedom. The train won't be leaving for a couple days — just enough time for the heat to ease off the hunt a little more — and the motel room's been paid up besides. Arthur throws himself into the shower with relief, but when he comes back out, he's sweating and sticky all over again.

"Fuck, this week has been awful," Arthur says as he dresses himself in the clothes Eames had laid out for him. He leaves the coat alone and pulls on the vest over his shirt before rolling up his sleeves to the elbow. Already he's feeling sluggish with the heat, and with a grateful groan, he sinks into the cushions of an ugly-as-hell sofa as he eyes Eames from across the room. "What do you think?"

Eames laughs from his perch against the sealed French doors that give a view of the motel's weedy garden. He’s conceded much more to the heat than Arthur — and much sooner. Over half of his his shirt is unbuttoned — its once crisp cotton is damp with sweat — and Arthur can catch glimpses of Eames' many tattoos over the looping neckline of his wife-beater.

“I never thought I’d miss the bloody Russian winter," starts Eames, vocal as always in his irritation, "but this damn heat is nearly worse than waking up to gunfire.”

Even with the sun having dipped behind the buildings, Bolivia’s cloying midday heat hasn’t abated, making their inability to leave their run-down hotel room even more tortuous. So, they waste time by catching each other up to speed with the situation. 

Getting their hands on a PASIV device had been the most tenuous part of the plan, in the beginning, and its current safety can be attributed to one of Arthur’s old acquaintances, Jensen. Under normal circumstances, someone with connections to the black market might find movement a bit difficulty, but Jensen is legally dead and a world-class hacker besides, so he can pretty much move however he wants. Eames is very amused at Arthur having “dead” friends — especially once he learns that Arthur hadn’t simply reconnected with his old friend after his ignoble departure from military service but had been in contact with him all along. 

(“Rather scandalous for someone as proper as you tended to be, Arthur," Eames had commented.) 

"A real piece of work, your Jensen," Eames says now, grunting as he lights up a fresh cigarette from and starts pulling off his open shirt by the sleeves. "I've never seen someone look quite as harassed as he did just because someone shot at him."

While Eames plows ever onward with his thoughts on why the job went bad, Arthur mulls over his regretful decision to put on a fresh suit, even if he'd foregone the coat and tie. He clings tenaciously to the layers he's put on out of stubbornness, but gives in to the pressure of heat and humidity by undoing all four of the vest's buttons, along with his top three shirt buttons. Tripping slightly over his commentary as soon as he's noticed Arthur's movement, Eames gives him the expected leer at the sight of bare skin, but he's already wilting at the edges, fuzzy and lethargic as the lingering daylight saps the energy from him. It gives Arthur the excuse to look back though, to admire the face and form of a man he'd hesitated to hope to see again. 

Eames is only slightly different outside the military than he was in — a bit more vocal in his thoughts and a bit heavier with the vices, but mostly the same. He hasn't changed like Arthur's changed, though Arthur doesn't know if he can count the exchange of dress uniforms for suits as a real difference. Primarily, it's the cigarettes and the fact that he smokes them like they're going out of style.

He's been chain smoking for most of their conversation, and Arthur is growing more irritated with every cigarette he lights. They aren’t his favored clove cigarettes, but after the day he’s had, they smell fabulous. Stretching languidly, he tilts his head back against the ugly couch upholstery and wishes he were sharing Eames' smoke.

"What were we thinking?" Eames muses, when they've divulged everything pertinent and have nothing else to give each other but quiet, thickened with smoke and humid heat. "This job was a shit piece of work from the start. You and I," he says, taking a final pull off his cigarette and flicking it out the window. "The heat must have got to us by the time we got the request. We were crazy for even thinking we could handle a job like this."

Arthur watches him pop a fresh stick out of the carton and greedily takes in the way Eames bares the side of his throat as he lights it with his last match. The fresh breath of smoke is filled with enough sticky flavor to make his teeth ache for a taste. “You were crazy when I first met you; you can’t blame it on the heat — I know better.”

“Shut it, you. I’m not the only one here who's gone off the deep end. It was your idea to contact the guy some CIA puppet-master tried to frame and murder. You’re definitely cracked if you don’t realize that’s going to come back to bite us in the arse eventually.” Eames sighs and takes another drag. Gesturing with the glowing butt, he continues. “Of course, that’s if Jensen can even manage that bit of magic he promised.”

“Jensen will come through.” Arthur glares at Eames from the corner of his eye, but is really feeling too lethargic to put up a good argument. He stretches out a hand toward Eames, flicking his first two fingers meaningfully, and assures Eames: “He always does.”

“Nice of you to have so much faith in him,” Eames says as he holds out his cigarette with a raised brow and when Arthur nods, taps out a second cigarette from his pack. He has to stand to put it between Arthur's fingers, but doesn't seem to mind coming to a stop in front of Arthur's sprawl.

Though he hadn't planned on giving in, now that he has the cigarette in his hand, Arthur is glad that Eames had been willing to spare it. Even unlit, the feel of the papered filter is entirely centering. They might not be his usual clove — or even any good brand of cigarette at all — but the notion is there. As he tongues the filter between his lips, Arthur explains: “Jensen once dragged me thirty-six clicks in the Iranian desert with a concussion, a sprained ankle, and four broken ribs while I was unconscious and bleeding. Having faith in him is the least I can do.”

"My, how you've loosened up," Eames comments. "Are you sure you're my Arthur? Shouldn't your faith be justified by a file on his history as opposed to a single instance of good will toward your person?" He smiles warmly down at Arthur and says, "Not that I mind, of course. I rather like you alive."

Arthur arches a brow. "Mr. Eames," he drawls and leans in the depths of the sofa, shifting his knees just enough apart that Eames can step between them. “Have you ever known me to be anything less than—" here, he tilts his head to look up at Eames, at the dull burn of his cigarette and the fold of his mouth around its cylinder, and finishes with an insinuating edge, "— _fully informed_?”

“There's my Mr. Wright,” says Eames with a quirky smile. His eyes flick over the picture Arthur presents of himself — the splay of his legs, the angle of his neck, the exposed triangle of his chest. Abruptly, he drops one knee to the edge of the sofa and braces one hand by Arthur's head. "Does this mean you're taking a break for once, then?"

Laughing at the hopeful lilt to Eames' voice, Arthur is encouraged by the return of the other man’s flirtations. It’s been a long time; though he’d never say so, he’s been worried that working this job together might have put too hard a strain on their new positions in life as free men. Up until this point, Arthur had only heard of Eames' break into the illegal dreaming community by word of mouth. Though it seems they'd both leaped at the opportunity to work together again, Arthur had nurtured the concern that such a familiar face might be too much of a burden for Eames' somewhat fragile state. It seems his worries had been needless after all; Eames looks no closer to breaking now than he had before Russia. That's all the reassurance that Arthur needs right now to relax.

Pushing himself from the back of the sofa into a more upright position with one elbow, Arthur rests one hand at Eames' hip and says before rolling his cigarette to the bow of his lips, "Light me up. Then we can talk."

With a chuckle, Eames tilts toward him. He steadies Arthur by fitting a hand over his ribs, keeping a distance between them as he guides the tip of his cigarette to Arthur's. He takes a couple breaths — both slow, deep burns that Arthur matches with his own — until both cigarettes have turned red, and Arthur drops back into the sofa cushions, convinced for a single moment that Eames is going to just follow him down. Instead, he angles himself to the side and flops down next to Arthur. He does set one hand on Arthur's thigh, however, so that's encouraging.

"Alright," Eames agrees, squeezing his fingers around Arthur's knee. His voice practically purrs as he taps excess ash onto the floor. "Let's talk."

Talking starts off slow — with tiny, incremental confessions — but pretty soon, they're both weighted down with smoke and heat. It's a bit like being intoxicated, Arthur realizes, as he listens to Eames talk about his totem in vague, non-descriptive terms and watches him rub his thumb over the surface of a very normal looking poker chip. 

"I still dream," Eames admits. It's not much of a surprise to Arthur, though, because as much as he would have expected Eames to have lost that ability by now, with how long they've been in the dreaming business, he's come to learn that Eames exceeds most explanation. "Not as much as I used to, mind. But—"

Eames trails off, but Arthur picks it up. "Your mind is pretty resilient."

"Yes, well," he hedges. "It'd have to be, wouldn't it?"

"I used to dream about being a real world architect," Arthur says. 

The nicotine in his system is doing its job at last, sinking into his bones and letting him fit his body in next to Eames. It's the same fit as it was in England, only there's no responsibility here. There's no dream to counteract; no projection to be fended off. It's just the weight of Eames' palm over his thigh and the sharp, salty tang of sweat and smoke.

Eames leans into Arthur and murmurs his next words into Arthur's hair. "What do you dream about now?"

"Nothing," Arthur tells him. "I can't afford to dream anymore."

It's a lie in its own way. While he sleeps without dreaming, he still wants in different ways. He ends up circling around his desires during the day, picking at them without revealing them. The fact of the matter is that he would like to stay exactly like this — quiet and settled in the wake of some fast paced work with Eames at his side — but reality makes it impossible. The identities of Winters and Mr. Wright have grown too large — too cumbersome and sentient — to be of any practical use. Though it's nice to be recognized for one's skill, it's obvious now that this job in Bolivia had reached him and Eames too easily; a year ago this job would have been considered too risky to attempt, and three years ago no one would have thought it possible.

This is their doing. Mr. Wright and Winters change the game with every job they take, and Bolivia isn't going to be any different. He fears that the attention this is bound to bring them — at a time when they need less, not more — will be the end of them. The problem with legends is that they're never as perfect as people imagine (no men are), but people have no sympathy for such failings in their myths and fables. It would be like being torn apart by projections, at a time when Arthur (and Eames, if he was correct) is least equipped to handle such things.

He's unsettled — off balance one might say, if one was not Arthur and had room for such things — and more wary than he's been since he'd stepped into COT for the very first time, freshly eighteen and still shiny and new (before the world had given him a patina of aloofness) with his uniform still wrapped in plastic in his backpack.

When he'd agreed to take this job with Eames, he had thought of it as a challenge. As a way to test skills that he feared might grow rusty without a legitimate use or even a forum in which to exercise them. Now, sitting in a sweltering hotel room in Bolivia, he begins to think that it's a trap of their own making.

 _A trap or an opportunity?_ he thinks.

Testing the idea, he says, "Maybe we should take advantage of the situation."

“Advantage, Mr. Wright?” Eames is flirting again, with his nose still pressed into his hair, so he must be marginally interested in what Arthur might suggest. “How so?”

“I've been thinking," Arthur says as he pulls a short breath off his cigarette. It's the third he's bummed off Eames, with them getting subsequent lights from each other while they lean together and wait for night to fall completely. "'Mr. Wright' has had a good run, but maybe it's time for him to retire in a more permanent manner." He covers the hand Eames still has over his knee. "Maybe 'Winters' too."

Eames' eyebrow rise incredulously, “Well darling, what did you have in mind?” This drag on his cigarette is slower; thoughtful.

“Something with flair, I think.” Arthur allows the tiniest of grins to creep onto his face.

“A naturally dramatic exit from the stage,” Eames agrees with amused severity. "We only deserve the most impressive departure from the business, of course."

“Of course.” 

Eames has been using words like that all day — _we_ and _us_ instead of _I_ and _you_ — and talking about retirement, even with playful seriousness, makes Arthur sit up and twist to look Eames in the face. Hand braced on the battered couch back, he muses, “A joint retirement? Should Mr. Wright expect to see a great deal of Winnie once they're on vacation?”

A grin quirks Eames' lips, and he drawls, “Perhaps,” as his hand shifts from Arthur's knee to his waist, thumbing over the top of his belt with a comfortable breach of his personal space.

Taking a deep breath before letting the smoke curl softly out of his mouth, Arthur leans into Eames' touch as he speaks, “I think poison should do the trick.”

"No explosives?" When Arthur makes a face at the suggestion, Eames chuckles and squeezes his hip. “You know, darling, the majority of poisoners are women. They can't stand the mess of less civilized methods.” His smirk has incited lesser men than Arthur to do violence, but right now, he's distracted by the idea of having nothing in the way of building a fresh life with Eames beside him.

“I thought our undamaged corpses would be easier to produce than our mangled, blown up remains.” Arthur narrows his eyes and continues, “You would want to blow something up when faking your own death.”

This draws a rich laughter from Eames as he shifts to drag Arthur closer. “I'm not allowed to have some fun before I die?”

“The last time I let you to blow anything up, you nearly did die.”

“Fair enough,” Eames concedes. “What kind of poison then?”

“Something slipped into the Somnacin by an 'untrustworthy' chemist?” Arthur offers as Eames tilts his mouth up to kiss the underside of his jaw.

After the barest of touch of his lips, Eames draws back to raise both brows incredulously. “Literally? Something to put us in some sort of coma then. Like that ho-dun toxin?”

“Perhaps," Arthur says.

“'Perhaps'? You're the one who wants to actually poison us. Forgive me for wanting a little specificity.”

Raising his eyebrow, Arthur laughs, “Really, Mr. Eames? You've taken potentially fatal jobs with much less 'specificity.'”

“Hush, darling. Smugness doesn't become you.” He smirks. “You do realize that if we're poisoned, they'll take us back for autopsy? And if that happens...” He gestures vaguely through the air.

Arthur pauses. “How much plastic explosive would you need?”

Eames grins.

  


The moment is now. It's time to move or get caught and there's no way either of them is going to stand for that. Arthur already has all his gear set to go and Eames has his satchel slung around his body, cutting into the sweat beading over his shoulder. They duck out of the door, one after the other, into the sweltering heat, into the bright sunlight, and they stand just past the threshold together, lingering for the last moment they had. Perhaps, they won't see each other for quite a while.

It seems that they both think it at the same time because they turn to look at each other, remembering everything they'd confessed in the heavy hours they'd been trapped here. Arthur opens his mouth as though he wants to say something (something horrible, like goodbye maybe) and is thankfully distracted by the sound of gunshots, rapid fire, behind him. 

Eames catches Arthur around the waist as he turns back, splaying his fingers along his back, along the fine curve of his spine, and tucks Arthur against his body. He presses a kiss to Arthur's lips — very fast, very sweet, before Arthur can even draw his gun and maybe change his mind about Eames all over again — and says: "Darling," before slipping quickly away.

**NEW YORK STATE, UNITED STATES (JUNE 2011)**

Last time they'd seen each other, they'd gone their separate ways in a rush but Arthur remembers it perfectly even if he won't admit out loud that he often finds himself going over those last moments when he's alone. They're a comfort at the oddest of moments — when he's been city hopping for a while and wonders when he's going to finally relax and remember that he's not a part of the Somnacin Project anymore, that the PASIV device he has was theirs up until about two months ago.

Now is before he finds Mallorie again, and her husband Cobb, but it's after Bolivia has become a well worn memory with its smoky non-confessions and that kiss — where Winters... where Eames had dipped into his space like a lightning bolt and kissed him like a shock.

Now is on accident.

Now is the north shore of Long Island, not far from New York.

Arthur is at a party and, it turns out, so is Eames.

"Arthur, dear!" cries an older woman — Maude, his host and the mother of his client. "Where have you been all night? I have someone I'm absolutely dying for you to meet!"

It's champagne chill against his fingertips. It's the crisp breeze in the wind. It's the live band with its soft tones and its sweet solos. It's the crawling tremor of anticipation when he hears grass crunching underfoot behind him, and he knows before he even turns—

"Unexpected," murmurs Eames, "but not at all unpleasant."

Maude seems disappointed to not be the source of a new connection but seems content to let them reacquaint themselves. Eames looks good, Arthur decides when he does finally look at him. He's not worn at the edges like he was after Russia, nor is he the dirty-playing and over-rebellious man from Bolivia that pushed borders and scrabbled for purchase. He's clean and calm lines of sophistication here, and the way he's tucked his hand into his pocket actually helps that.

Here, Mr. Wright would have asked which party-member was a client, if he needed to worry about conflicting business, but Arthur doesn't. He steps in close, exchanges his champagne flute for two fresh ones from a passing waiter, and offers the second to Eames as he says:

"It's been a while. We should catch up."

Eames' smile is brilliant.

Arthur tilts his head off to the side. "Solarium?"

The champagne disappears before they reach the edge of the party and the glasses get left on a short wall of brick outlining the gardens, and they duck past perfectly lined trees and climbing ivory and into the glass walls of the solarium with its sweetly-scented humidity and the darkly shadowed greenery glistening under the glow of tiny white lights. Eames laughs as he stumbles down the few short steps to the plush-cushion-on-grid-iron chaise, and he pulls Arthur to him. There's no guard between them right now — not like it had kind of been in Bolivia and not like it had been even earlier. Not like how it will be later when they'll have to worry about the ghosts of their past. It's as if meeting anew — with their new names and new identities and new pasts — has set them free.

They still come together with the same knowledge of each other — in a sense. Arthur knows to go slow and let Eames feel his heat before continuing. Eames knows to slip his arm under Arthur's jacket to free the gun from his holster before carrying on. And it's kind of funny, knowing these things while exploring this new part. To learn the soft feel of Eames' mouth while the muscles between Arthur's shoulder blades tremble quietly with the strain of going as slowly as he needs, to not rush the kiss like they had the last time.

He slots their mouths together easily, lets the motion of it all become a gentle sway back and forth between them — the pull of Eames' mouth to the push of Arthur's. Eames isn't much shorter than him, not enough to be much of a difference when they're viewed together, but this close — this close — the tilt of Arthur's head becomes more apparent.

In the distance, the live band is trying out an old French tune — something lovely and crooning — and Eames swells in the wake of it, surging up into the kiss. He fists his hands at Arthur's waist, pulling at his shirt, and — really, this humidity is as good a reason as the encouragement Eames whispers to discard his jacket. Eames helps him shove it down his arms but proceeds to tug at Arthur's tie and collar while his hands are trapped in the sleeves. He laughs, hot and low against the line of Arthur's neck, and his knuckle rests at the top of his breastbone like a promise while his mouth sucks dark evidence of the truth to the surface.

Eames is careful — plucking Arthur's clothes open with delicate fingers... individual buttons and individual articles of clothing. Arthur doesn't have the same problem. He yanks Eames' shirt up, pulls it half way up his chest so that when Arthur wraps his arm around his waist, all he can feel is skin and more skin. Arthur dips his fingers into the line of his spine, between the hard muscle of his back, over little scars and then down — down past the hard leather of his belt and the elastic of his underwear until his fingertips are almost sliding between his cheeks.

Eames melts into him immediately — grips Arthur's arms in both hands as he breathes hard and hot against his cheek. "Arthur," he warns as he closes what little distance they have between them. "I swear—"

Arthur kisses him again — with greater force and the need to possess this moment — and gives in to the desire to tip Eames back onto the chaise he so cheerfully had sidled toward earlier. Folding over him is easy. Bracing himself over Eames is easier still when those long legs slide open to accommodate his width. The whole process of undressing is so much harder like this — braced on one hand while the other hand works, but Eames has decided to be helpful at last, pulling at his own clothes and shoving them off the end of the chaise before going for Arthur's belt. Eames says dirty things while Arthur kisses all the skin he can reach — the sharp line of his collarbone and the muscle of his shoulder and his ear and the skin behind it and his forehead, everything.

He kisses the dark lines of the tattoo as it curls around Eames' neck and the theatrical masks on his chest while he listens to Eames say: "I was watching you long before Maude told me you were here. Looked so good standing around like you couldn't give a shit about the caviar that's sixty pounds a pop or the fireworks or the dancing. I couldn't wait—"

He slides his hand into Arthur's pants, wraps around him and strokes him firmly as he pulls him into the open air. He smiles at the way Arthur whimpers and pushes up on his elbows to continue his dialogue against Arthur's open mouth.

"Couldn't wait until I had you in my hands, hearing you shout my name so loud that they'll hear you over the band."

It should be less erotic than it is perhaps. The humidity and the sweat has left Arthur feeling a little sticky and the champagne makes his head swim. But Eames has his jacket and shirt crumpled under his weight with Arthur's gun sitting at his hip and his legs to either side of Arthur's body and his feet are sliding against his clothed calves. And he's looking at Arthur like he's got nothing else worth looking at in the world.

Arthur is about to tease — to say that he'd like to see Eames try — but Eames tugs at him, slow and smooth before twisting to search for something in his coat pocket. Having closed his eyes at the feeling of Eames' hand on him, at the calluses that make the whole experience a little rougher, there's no warning at all beyond the click of the tube opening before Eames is sliding lubricant over the whole length of him.

He laughs as he shakes in Eames' grip. "So little foreplay, Eames? I'm surprised."

"Darling," Eames chides and maybe Arthur swoons a little when Eames' hand leaves him to dip between his own legs. "We've had a few years of foreplay as it is. I think we've had enough."

The shaking doesn't stop as he lifts and spreads Eames' knees, but for the first time, he can feel the tremble of Eames' body — the tension that hardens his thighs and the way he holds his breath, not necessarily in anticipation. 

"Eames," he says. Then instead: "Daniel."

And Eames looks up at him wonderingly and smiles with that cheeky curl around the corner of his mouth. The tension loosens under Arthur's hands and he presses closer.

"Well what are you waiting for, Arthur?" Eames asks, touching the tip of Arthur's cock with his fingers. "Morning waits for no man."

They kiss as they slide together. Eames guides Arthur with his hand and Arthur strokes his thumbs under Eames' knees before tucking them around his waist. It's wet and sweaty and sticky, and Eames kind of stops breathing and Arthur kind of keeps gasping into his mouth. They both have to break away just to get air and end up tucking themselves into their necks, breathing in more sweat and more humidity.

The air is heavy but the moment is so light that Arthur doesn't mind shifting that much closer into Eames' space. Eames lights up like a firecracker — arching up and barking out a surprised noise and going red like he's about to explode. Arthur would find it fascinating that Eames — a beautiful Forger, whose skill with lies and deceit come so easily — can hide so little in these moments, if he weren't so absolutely caught up in the heat of this, in every encouragement he feels at the small of his back, for every inch of him that wants to catch this moment and string it out forever.

He gasps Eames' name over and over — the real one that Eames had given to him what seems like a lifetime ago now — and doesn't stop moving, not even when Eames grabs at his arms and starts honest-to-god mewling. He drives in — steadily and unhesitatingly. He doesn't tease out the moment — doesn't stall in the seconds before the fall just to hear Eames whine. He doesn't ask Eames what he wants, if he wants it harder or faster or anything, because he's got it right already.

He's got their fingers tangled together and their mouths against each other. He's got his shirt sticking to his back and a French song warbling through the walls and champagne bubbling through blood.

He's got Eames below him and around him and this is all of him; this is all of them.

Here in this moment, this is all of them.

This is now.

  
[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595830) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595808) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595816) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595828) [ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/366127/chapters/595830)


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